A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  Others voices loudly joined the call. Constantine raised his hands. ‘You see only some names – Loukas Notaras, the megas doux, for example – because these are the men we know are in the city. Others are on embassy or soldiering beyond our walls. When they return, they will command our imperial forces …’ He broke off, looking suddenly above the heads of the throng, just to Gregoras’s left. ‘And here are the men who will be able to tell us what those forces are! Come forward, old friends. Come.’

  Gregoras looked. The first man to come through the gate masked the other, and that first was George Sphrantzes, court historian and friend to emperors past. He cleared … and Gregoras saw the man he’d concealed.

  Theon Lascaris.

  Gregoras’s first thought was his knife. His hand dropped onto the hilt, but instead of drawing it, he swung away, turning his head to the north. When he glanced back, his brother had gone past, eyes fixed on the beckoning Constantine.

  He let go of his knife. Theon, he thought, but the name sounding in his head did not bring with it the clear, bright hatred it had brought for so long. That had become muddied by Sofia’s revelation the day before – that beside Theon, raised as his own, would be Gregoras’s son

  My son. Mine! He thought of him now, as he had not thought of him till this moment, too stunned to consider, as if from a mace blow to his helmet. What does he look like? he wondered suddenly. And then: does he have my mother’s laugh?

  He tried to focus again on the group of men before him. The aged Sphrantzes had drawn Constantine aside to whisper in his ear, and Gregoras watched as such colour as there was fled the emperor’s face. He beckoned Giustiniani, who stooped to hear and go pale in his turn. Questions were being asked that Gregoras could not hear. But he could hear the words that came from beside him, though he had not heard the approach of the man who spoke them.

  ‘I know who you are,’ came the whisper. Fingers tightened on his arm. ‘And I had to feel that you were alive and not a ghost.’

  Gregoras turned. It was a rare man who could take him unawares. But Theodore of Karystenos had always been a rare man.

  Gregoras looked up into watery grey eyes. Saw no danger in them, no threat that the traitor and exile was about to be unmasked. Only the same amusement that had ever been there, mixed now with curiosity. ‘How did you know me, master?’

  ‘By the way you stand, my young man. Even when you wielded a bow, and despite the years I spent trying to beat it out of you, you always stood that way, ever forward, like a heron about to strike. Once I’d finished calling on the Virgin to protect me from ghosts and demons, once you did not vanish into stone or rise into the air spouting flame, I had to know for sure.’ Fingers like small iron bars kneaded Gregoras’s forearm. ‘You are with these Genoans?’

  ‘I am. I sought refuge in their company. Have fought with them on a dozen ventures.’

  ‘Fought?’ His hand settled again on Gregoras’s arm, higher up. ‘But not with the bow, certain. You have the muscles of a girl.’

  Gregoras smiled. ‘They use the crossbow.’

  Theodore spat. ‘An assassin’s weapon! And you, an archer of the guard, one of the elite! What’s become of you, boy?’

  His smile vanished. ‘Treason and exile, master. One must make one’s way as one can.’

  Sadness replaced the humour in the old man’s eyes. ‘I know. I know,’ he said, gently shaking the arm he held. He stepped closer, his voice lowering further. ‘You have to know, Gregoras, that none of your comrades believed … that I did not believe in your villainy. No one who truly knew you did. But when those bastard Turks brushed aside our wall in the Morea as if it were gossamer, and some poured through that sally port that was left ajar, well …’ He shrugged. ‘Many sought to quell their despair in God’s fury, or treason. I was unconscious for three days from a sling stone to the head.’ He sighed. ‘By the time I recovered, it was too late. The first part of the sentence …’ he gestured vaguely to Gregoras’s face, ‘had been carried out. And you were gone.’

  Gregoras grunted. It meant something, a little anyway, that his mentor had not thought him a traitor. But it was still too late.

  Theodore continued, ‘You were unlucky, lad. Wrong place, wrong time. And the Turkish gold in your pack …’

  ‘I found it. In our one counterattack on the Turkish camp. I came back through that sally port and I locked it. Locked it!’ Gregoras was a little startled by his heat. He thought he’d cooled it in a thousand wineskins.

  ‘I am sure.’ The older man patted his arm, looked away. ‘At least your brother was there. To plead for you. To save you from a worse fate.’

  ‘Worse?’ The heat flared higher. ‘You think there is something worse than this?’ He pressed his face out against the mask. ‘Than exile and dishonour? To be “saved” by a brother? A brother who then …’ He broke off. It was not something to discuss, even with a man who had once been a father to him.

  ‘My young man,’ Theodore said softly, raising his hand to the other’s shoulder.

  Then his words were interrupted. Constantine was speaking. ‘I have had news I must attend to,’ the emperor declared. ‘We will meet tomorrow at the imperial palace to discuss further dispositions.’ He held a hand against the questions that were being called out. ‘All will be answered then.’

  He began to move towards them at the stairwell, Giustiniani at his shoulder. ‘I must away with him,’ Theodore said. He squeezed Gregoras’s arm again, half turned away, turned back, gripping harder. ‘Why do you not come too, lad? The emperor did not believe the accusations against you any more than I did. But there was never time to reconsider them. A brief retrial. A decree issued from the palace. Your name restored to you.’ He smiled. ‘When he sees you here, returned to fight for your city …’

  Gregoras shrugged the hand off his shoulder. ‘No,’ he said, with more force than he’d intended, startling the older man. He breathed deep, then spoke more softly. ‘Not now. There are … affairs I must attend to first. Leave me now and I will join you later. When the time is right.’

  Theodore studied him for a long moment, then nodded. ‘Very well. But do not delay too long. If you were recognised and …’ he hesitated, ‘unmasked, it might go ill for you before we could intervene. There are many in the city who, as before, seek vengeance to assuage their terror.’

  ‘I will be careful. And I will come soon.’

  ‘Do so. The crisis is nearly upon us.’ He smiled. ‘And it will take me some time to break you of all your crossbowman’s bad habits.’ He punched the arm he’d lately held and followed Constantine.

  The men that passed through the archway had their own concerns. They were not seeking traitors. Even Giustiniani did not glance at him. So Gregoras was able to study, unobserved, all the faces – those he did not know. Those he did.

  Theon. His proximity caused a cramp in Gregoras’s stomach, a surge of bile to reach his mouth. His hands rose, not to grip a dagger this time, but a throat. In sleepless dreams he had considered a thousand ways to kill Theon. Strangling, watching life slowly leave the hated face, had always seemed the best.

  And yet that face! With Sphrantzes whispering in his ear, his brother nodding, tight-mouthed, suddenly Gregoras saw another mouth there, a different face, far younger. An imagined one, for he had never properly seen the boy that Theon called son.

  His hands dropped. From their looks he knew that the discussions ahead would be long and stormy. It would give him time to ride back into the city, to stare up again at familiar windows, to glimpse, perhaps, the product of love and hatred.

  John Grant tried to delay him. ‘Will you take a cup with me?’ the Scot asked.

  Gregoras was already moving past him. ‘Later,’ he replied. ‘I will find you.’

  He would. The Scot was one of the very few he still cared about in doomed Constantinople. Another was his commander. But if Giustiniani did not pay him what was promised, Gregoras would wish him to the devil. And the city with him.
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br />   He ran back along the battlements, descended the stair. His horse was there. He mounted. ‘Yah,’ he cried, and galloped into the rain.

  – THIRTEEN –

  The Love of Two Brothers

  By the time he reined in at the Genoan barracks, the steam from his galloping mount had almost warmed him. Leaving the mare with a groom there, he went into the tavern. It was too late for some of the mercenaries who would frequent it, too early for some others, and he had it to himself. Slowly he drank his way through a flagon and rid himself of his last chill by the fireplace. Then he left, hunched against the rain, and walked towards the gate of Theodosia, and his old family house close by it.

  He was not there for his ghosts now. He saw lights, shadows moving against whitewashed walls within. Hoping one of them was the shadow he sought, he stepped up to the door, lifted the brass knocker, struck.

  Sofia knew who it was. She had been expecting his visit from the moment they’d parted three days before. She knew he would not be able to keep away. Not after what she had told him. But who would come? The Gregoras of their youth? Or the one she’d just encountered? The laugher or the avenger? When she was not attending to her duties, she would kneel before the household altar and pray. Not for one to appear and not the other. For the grace to handle whoever came.

  She was praying when he knocked. Crossing herself, she rose swiftly, bent for a moment as the blood returned to her legs, then descended the stairs. ‘Who’s there?’ she called.

  ‘I.’

  She shot the bolts, opened the door. She could not see his face, but his voice was quiet within its shroud. ‘Do you open your own doors? Where are your servants?’

  ‘We have just one. I sent her out. Let her go visit her sweetheart. Times are … different now.’

  ‘They are.’ He did not move. ‘And your children?’

  ‘My daughter is asleep upstairs. My son … is elsewhere.’

  ‘Did you send him out too?’

  ‘No. He … he visits a tutor. Mathematics. He is … not gifted.’

  ‘Like his father, then.’

  She did not know whom he meant. And still he made no move. ‘Will you enter?’

  ‘I will.’

  He followed her up the familiar stairs. They opened onto the large central room where his family had always gathered. It had changed, different furniture, an altar against one wall. Yet it was the same room.

  ‘Will you …?’ Sofia pointed to some slippers beside the entranceway. Some would be for guests. Some would be her husband’s. After a moment’s hesitation, he bent, removed his boots, put on a soft pair.

  ‘Would you …?’ She opened her hands, to chairs around a table before the fireplace, its funnel-shaped chimney disappearing into the rooms above.

  ‘Yes.’ He moved slowly to it. He had come with demands. Here, in a room of ghosts, he could not remember any of them.

  He sat, she stood. They looked at each other. The silence extended. And then a cat jumped into his lap. ‘Jesu!’ he cried.

  ‘Ulvikul!’

  She came forward to shoo the cat away. But Gregoras had already found its weak point, fingers rubbing rhythmically under its chin, the animal bending to his touch.

  ‘A handsome beast,’ he murmured. ‘And you call him …?’

  ‘Ulvikul. A Turkish envoy who came, he gave him the name. It is because …’

  ‘Of this.’ Gregoras changed his stroking to the spot. ‘The “M” above his eyes. He is beloved of Muhammad.’

  ‘Yes.’ She bent, rubbed her hand up the belly that was now exposed. The cat, in double assault, purred in ecstasy. Their fingers touched. Both stopped rubbing. She turned, walked a few steps away and the cat leapt off to follow her.

  ‘He has a limp, your beloved.’

  ‘Yes. He had an accident.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Broke his leg. Fell out of a window.’

  ‘You and your animals, Sofitra.’ He paused as he used her childhood name, then went on quickly, ‘What was that dog you had, the bitch from the street? It had skin like a leper’s.’

  ‘Pistotatos!’ she cried. ‘I loved her.’

  ‘I know. You were the only one. She had a litter of puppies, each even uglier than herself, fit only for drowning.’

  ‘Which you did not do, did you, Gregor? You and Th …’ She hesitated, went on. ‘You found a home for each one.’

  ‘We did, my brother and I.’ He licked his lips. ‘But it was I alone who found other beasts for you when you decided to build the Ark.’

  She came, sat opposite him. ‘It had rained worse than this, for months it seemed. I was sure the flood was coming.’

  ‘What were we? Eight? You convinced me, enough to send me down rat holes and up trees to squirrels’ nests.’ He held out a forefinger. ‘You see that? That crescent-moon scar?’

  She took the finger, peered. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You needed a parrot. I tried to steal it from that Circassian trader’s shop. It took the top of my finger off.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t know which hurt worse. That, or the thrashing my father gave me for thievery.’

  She laughed too, still held his finger – until the cat rose onto its hind legs, thrust its head up, seeking strokes, breaking the grip.

  ‘My first scar for you. Not my last.’

  He had meant all scars. Thought he had, anyway. She took it differently. ‘Gregor, I am so sorry …’

  He held up his scarred hand. ‘As am I. For what I said … the other day. It was not what I felt. No, it was, for it was my anger. But not my belief.’

  ‘I know.’ Sofia leaned forward. ‘You have reason for your anger.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ He sat back, the cat craning up to look at him. Gregoras was aware again of what was between them. Actually between them, the mask and all it hid.

  It was as if she spoke then to his thoughts. ‘May I see again … your other scar?’

  She raised her hand, reached towards his face. He caught it. ‘Why?’ he rasped, his throat dry. ‘Curiosity? Is it not said that it will be the death of cats?’

  ‘Not curiosity. Perhaps I wish to see again what fate wrought for us.’

  ‘Then see,’ he said, and released her hand.

  He had seen the shock there before, the pity. He had recoiled from it. Now, as she reached and slipped the mask down, he saw only study, a woman’s concern. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, her fingertips hovering near the ivory replica.

  ‘No. It aches sometimes. But that is from its absence, not its presence.’ He closed his eyes, as her fingers ran lightly down the side, where ivory met skin. Opened them again, spoke part of the question that had been there from the beginning. ‘Does he … he have my nose? Our son?’

  ‘Oh.’ She sat back, looked away, to the cat, busy with something in the corner. ‘He is young. Seven. His nose … it is not yet fully shaped.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He shook his head. ‘I know little about children. ‘I have not …’

  He broke off, as the cat gave a little jump, landed. They both saw something else there, something small that tried to dart away, then froze as claws descended fast.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘a mouse.’

  ‘Yes.’ He watched the cat release the mouse, corner it again. ‘He is fast, despite his injury.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was a time when you would have saved it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She watched the death game. He watched her, her eyes in the fire glow, the lines that ran from them. There were things missing that he used to see there. Her joy, that could light rooms, was gone. But he had seen caring there before, when she looked at his maiming. She was the same person, for all her travails. He leaned forward, spoke low and urgently what he’d come to say. ‘That mouse is this city, Sofitra. The cat is the Turk, except the Turk when he comes will not limp. He will toy with us for a while and then he will swallow us whole.’

  ‘You cannot know this.’

  ‘I can!
For I know him, have fought him on a dozen grounds. He is hard to beat when the numbers are close to even. But when he is bringing ten, twenty times our strength, to a city that is already almost dead …’ He shook his head. ‘He will not be stopped. And he will come up those stairs, and he will take whatever he wants.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You and my … your children must not be here when he does.’

  She stared back at him. ‘Where would we go?’

  ‘Anywhere but here. I would accompany you, if you let me. See you safe.’

  ‘You would desert our city? Our home? Now when she needs you most?’

  ‘It is not my home any more,’ he replied, hotly. ‘I owe her nothing and I did not return to fight for her.’

  ‘So why did you come back?’

  He did not answer. For a moment he thought it was because he was ashamed to say that he was there for gold. And then he realised – and the realisation shocked him – that gold may have been the excuse. But it was not the reason. The reason sat before him. The reason was her.

  ‘It is strange,’ she said after a moment. ‘But though you are so different, your brother and you, you are alike in this.’

  He stiffened. ‘How?’

  ‘You both want me gone. He has tried to send me from the city, as so many of the richer families have sent their kin. And I know that a wife is subject to her husband, how she should always obey …’ She swallowed. ‘But I could not in this. And nothing he could say or … or do would persuade me.’

  ‘Why not? What can you do here?’

  ‘Little enough, sure. But if the Turk batters down our walls by day, I can go to them at night and help to patch them. I can take care of the wounded, bring them water and solace. Most of all, I can pray.’

  Gregoras sat back. ‘Pray?’ he echoed.

  ‘God loves us, Gregoras. He will forgive our sins, even those of this sinful city. And Our Lady who watches over us closely, she will not let her own city fall to the heathen. At the last, in our hour of most desperate need, she will guide heaven’s holy fire down upon our enemies.’