A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  Mehmet scowled, looking along the rows of backs before him. ‘Well, that makes sense. Come.’ He gestured to the executioner. ‘Lay your blade upon this wretch’s neck, so he feels death’s approach.’ He turned, and strode behind the screen.

  Hamza took a deep breath, rose and followed. A servant was already pouring from a jug, and both men sipped the sweetened, frothy juices before Hamza spoke again, carefully. ‘The fool deserves to die.’

  ‘He does.’ Mehmet nodded vigorously.

  ‘He failed you, lord. He blundered about the sea and let the prize slip away.’

  ‘You would have done things differently, Hamza. I would. Anyone but a fool would.’

  ‘Indeed, master.’ Hamza was not sure how, but proving Baltaoglu unlucky was not his goal. He was happy to see the cruel Bulgar fall; it cleared the space around the young sultan for abler men such as himself. However, he had recognised the mood in the otak. Divisions had existed from the beginning over this project, this dream of conquest, and half the men out there had had to be compelled to assist in it – and needed that compulsion still. There was already dispirited talk amongst them, barely two weeks into the siege, the walls battered yet standing, and the Greeks still obdurate. The party that had always opposed the war, led by the grand vizier Candarli Halil, seized on rumour and expanded on it – the Pope had organised a crusade, Hunyadi and the Hungarians had torn up the treaty and were marching overland to join it, the Italian states were sending a fleet. Even these four ships would be used as evidence that once again the nation of Islam should retreat from the place that had always defeated them.

  But Hamza was not of that party. His continued success, his rise from tanner’s son to bey, could only be sustained, he knew, if Mehmet sat on the throne. And he would not sit on it long if he abandoned this dream. Conquer, and he would have the success that had eluded the Prophet’s followers for eight hundred years. Fail, and he would be gone, and Hamza with him.

  Little things could change everything. War was cruel, and cruelty was necessary on occasion. But it was like training hawks. Sometimes you had to sit out in the freezing rain for one whole night to bind a proud bird to the fist. But you did not sit out two. You did not kill what would bring success.

  ‘Master,’ Hamza went on, softly, ‘you have every right to take this fool’s life. But I ask you, what would that achieve?’

  ‘Achieve?’ Mehmet’s eyes flared. But his voice lowered too. ‘It would achieve my satisfaction.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, lord. But would it achieve your desire? Would it bring you nearer to tearing down the cross on the Hagia Sophia and raising a minaret?’ It never harmed to remind the sultan of the holiness of what they were about. Seeing his eyes widen, he pressed on. ‘It seems a little thing, master, to kill a fool. But many would think that though he was foolish, he was not afraid. He pressed the attack from the front. He has a bad wound to prove it. Not in his back, where cowards are struck. In his eye, which was fixed upon the enemy.’

  Mehmet took another sip. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Make an example of him, master. Disgrace him. Strip him of rank. Expel him from your presence. But do not kill him. Alive, he would for ever be an example of both your wrath and your mercy, a goad to others to serve you better. Dead …’ Hamza shrugged.

  ‘Dead, he would have other fools rally about his corpse.’ Mehmet nodded. The high colour had left his cheeks, cooled by sherbet and soft words. ‘That is what you are saying?’

  Hamza nodded. The sultan’s voice was calm now. For all his sudden choler, Mehmet was also a thinker, a planner, considering even the minutest effect an action might have. Sometimes he agonised too much and slept too little.

  Hamza watched as the young man turned to the table behind him, to maps and papers there. Laying down his goblet, he picked up a map, held it to the light. ‘You know what we need to do, Hamza Bey?’ he said calmly.

  ‘What, master?’

  ‘We need to make those bells cease their ringing.’ He gestured towards the city beyond the canvas, its insistent tolling. ‘The Christians think that these four ships mean rescue. That their triumph in this fight means that more triumph will come. We need to act now, immediately, to take away this little hope.’ He looked up and, for the first time in an age, he smiled. ‘Their despair tomorrow will be all the greater if it is contrasted with their joy today.’

  Hamza stepped nearer. He had done what he needed to do. Now he must listen. For all his closeness to Mehmet, he was only one of several. The sultan would consult one, and not tell another. He delighted in secrets and surprise.

  ‘Hold this,’ the sultan said, handing over a map. Hamza saw that it was a close drawing of the cities, Galata and Constantinople, that faced each other across the Golden Horn. Mehmet pointed to a line that linked the two. ‘Their accursed boom,’ he said. ‘Another failure of Baltaoglu’s, for he tried and failed to force it. But it stops our ships entering the Horn, and so all these walls …’ he ran his finger along the line of towers and battlements marked on the water’s edge, ‘need not be defended. They can put their few troops all here …’ he tapped, ‘on the land walls.’ He looked up. ‘Did you hear that our great bombard destroyed one of the towers, here, tonight, at the gate they call Romanus?’

  ‘I did, lord. All praise to you for moving it there and our gunners for their skills.’

  ‘But I was not there to order a general assault, because of that fool out there. And now the Greeks have filled the wall with rubble and barrels and all sorts of muck. And because they have the men, they can crowd a breach. But if they had to take men away from there, and guard these …’ he tapped the sea walls again, ‘our men would push through their weakness.’ He looked at Hamza over the papers. ‘We have to get our ships into the Golden Horn.’

  Hamza looked down. ‘The boom? A bigger assault?’

  ‘I am not confident any would succeed. Remember also, the boom is as much part of Galata as of Constantinople. Those damned Genoese complain every time we attack it. They say they are neutral, but we know they supply their fellow Christians, while others of their country fight beside them.’

  Hamza nodded. It was a constant problem. In fairness, the Genoese in Galata also supplied the Turks, making a great profit by the war from both sides. But their sympathies were clear. It was less to do with religion. The Catholic Italians had hated the Orthodox Greeks for centuries. But small Galata would not stay free for long once mighty Constantinople fell. Yet Mehmet needed them neutral, could not risk bringing an open war and a larger Genoese fleet than had already arrived.

  Hamza frowned. It was a riddle he could find no answer to. ‘I do not see, lord. How do we sail our ships into the Horn without breaking the boom and risking Genoese wrath?’

  Mehmet was smiling now. All trace of the raging tyrant was gone. He looked like what he still, at least partly, was – a very tall and excited young man. ‘We sail over the land, Hamza Bey. We sail over the land.’

  Hamza, looking for traces of madness in the smile, found none. ‘Lord?’

  Mehmet placed a finger on the map. ‘Here lies our fleet, at the Double Columns, behind Galata. But only the city and the foreshore belong to the Genoese. The rest is ours. And there is a path that runs from the columns, up this ridge and down the other side, along what the Greeks call the Valley of the Springs. That valley ends in the waters of the Golden Horn.’

  Too many questions came into Hamza’s head. He blurted one. ‘A path? It would be wide enough for goats, no doubt …’

  ‘I have caused it to be widened.’ Mehmet’s teeth gleamed in the lamplight. ‘My loyal Zaganos, who commands my armies on the Anatolian shore, has been working at night, with soldiers making sure any curious Galatans have … accidents. Zagan has done well. And he sends me word this night that all is in readiness.’

  Mehmet turned to the table. There were books there as well as maps, and he picked one up. ‘You are not such a student of war as I, Hamza. So you may not have read what the younger Caes
ar did to take Antoninus and that heated bitch Cleopatra in her comely rear. Nor of a marvellous trick once practised by the great emperor Xerxes.’ The smile widened. ‘I will be Caesar. I, Xerxes. For on the morrow, I will lift half my fleet on slings from the Double Columns and roll it on greased logs over the land and down into the Golden Horn.’ He pointed. ‘And I will make those bells toll sorrow.’

  Hamza was stunned. Partly by the fact that such had been the secrecy that he had heard nothing about an enterprise that must have been a while in preparing. Mainly by its sheer audacity. Mehmet just grinned at him until he found breath and words. ‘King of kings,’ he said, ‘it is extraordinary.’

  ‘Is it not? It will make me master of the waters. And soon after, I think, of the city itself.’ He lifted the map with his bastinado. ‘But I would have the shock of my fleet’s appearance be very sudden. So I would distract the defenders.’ He jabbed his finger down. ‘Here my land batteries will fire ever more fiercely on the walls. And here …’ he stabbed his finger at the line linking the two cities, ‘the half of my fleet that does not sail across the land will make another assault upon the boom.’ He sucked in his lower lip. ‘But I have no kapudan pasha now to lead it.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Yes, of course I do.’ He pointed. ‘You will be that leader, Hamza.’

  ‘I?’ If he’d been shocked before, he was more so now. ‘Lord, I will, as ever, obey your every command even unto death. But do you think me suitable?’

  ‘You have fought at sea?’

  ‘I commanded a trireme for your father for a time, and yes, I raided a few towns, took a few stuffed carracks. But a fleet …’

  ‘You know as much as most. We were ever a land people and are all learning new skills upon the water. Besides, what I want in my kapudan pasha is not just his knowledge upon the deck. It is judgement, it is courage, it is …’ he let the bastinado fall onto the older man’s shoulder, ‘you, Hamza Bey. You, Hamza … Pasha!’

  Hamza’s mind churned. This swift rising would bring not only status but profit too. The kapudan pasha’s share when the city fell would be enormous. Yet extraordinary opportunity brought extraordinary risk. The bastinado resting on his shoulder had lately lifted the bloodied head of a man who had found that out. He swallowed, spoke his thought. ‘And Baltaoglu?’

  Mehmet turned away, swinging the bastinado through the air as if it were a scimitar and he was cutting. ‘You were right, as ever. His death serves nothing. His courage will be rewarded by the sparing of his life. His stupidity punished …’ he slammed the stick down upon a book, making a sharp crack, ‘with a good beating.’ He nodded, raised his voice so all could hear beyond the latticed screen. ‘Let him be beaten, and then let him crawl from the camp. If he survives his wound, let him join the bashibazouks and try to regain his reputation in the breaches my cannon shall make in the walls.’ He lowered his voice again, stepped close to Hamza, whispered in his ear, ‘And let you and I rise early to watch our ships sail across the land.’

  – TWENTY-TWO –

  Ultimatum

  22 April

  The bell had not tolled in the Tower of Christ, but it was the only restraint the Genoans of Galata had shown in celebrating their fleet’s victory. There was as much carousing, as much singing, praying, drunkenness, Leilah suspected, as in the larger city across the Horn. She had slept little, then woken suddenly to a silence more disturbing than the noise that had preceded it. She was out of the bed she shared with the daughter of the grain merchant and joining her at the window in a moment. ‘What is it, Valeria?’ she said, looking down at tense-faced men scurrying along the street.

  ‘I do not know,’ came the reply. ‘When I came to bed, everyone was still laughing. Now …’ She pointed down. ‘Look, there is Sebastiano.’ She threw open the window. ‘Heh, Sebe! Sebastiano! Here! Here!’

  The summoned youth hastened over, his face red with too much wine, and the effort of trying to buckle a sword belt round his large belly. ‘Where is everyone going?’ Valeria called.

  ‘The walls,’ came the terse reply.

  ‘Mother Mary! Is it an attack?’

  ‘Perhaps. There are Turks on the ridge, thousands of them. I must go.’

  He staggered off. Valeria turned back – to Leilah, already dressing.

  She joined a stream of people on the side street, which fed into a wider way and that surged like a river with a crowd – soldiers in the main, but other townsfolk too – headed to the western walls. The jabber was all of the sudden appearance of so many Turks, the fear of what it might mean – that they had decided to end the so-called neutrality of Galata after the Genoese-led victory of the previous day. There was much bravado too, for Galatans were near as proud of their walls as the Greeks across the Horn were of theirs.

  The throng became ever more tightly pressed as it approached the north-western edge of the city. Forcing her way to the side, Leilah took an alley cutting up. There was a gap between two houses high on the slope, a stair beyond. Others knew of it too; she was not alone. But with a shove and a slide she was able to squeeze against a crenel and peer over it.

  Almost below her, a ridge ran at a right angle from the walls, its southerly slopes that swept to the water patchworked with cultivated fields and vineyards, the northerly ones largely wooded. Soldiers were spread in a double line along the crest, with a huge line in the middle thrust straight down over the fields, another thickness bulging across a short open space before disappearing into the trees. These centre lines, like the beams of a Christian cross, were abuzz, men in the middle engaged in some activity behind ranks of spearmen facing out. They were a bowshot away, and Leilah could see quite clearly, in the dawn light, the rise and fall of tools – mattocks, spades, poles – and hear both the thump of metal on wood and the underlying beat of a kos drum keeping time. Men were chanting too, a rhythmic call of one word: ‘Heave! Heave! Heave!’ Focusing on the cries, Leilah could see a ripple running through the line of men that led into the wood, as if they were one body, breathing out, breathing in.

  A different ripple distracted her. Beyond the central bulge, the twin lines were parting, men falling to their knees, laying their foreheads on the ground. A band of horsemen moved down the gap created, at their head a man in gleaming armour, riding under the twin banners of the Prophet and his own tugra, slashed across a red sky.

  ‘Mehmet,’ she murmured. It was the first time she’d seen her man of destiny since Edirne a year before, and she leaned closer to him over the parapet.

  The horsemen reined in on a slight rise above the centre of the cross. Men knelt, made obeisance, rose. An officer came up to the sultan’s stirrup, spoke, gesturing to the woods. Mehmet nodded, raised a hand into the air. All labour stopped, the drum ceased. The hand stayed up, as Mehmet slowly looked all about him, along the lines of silent troops, up to the walls of Galata; finally, across the waters of the Golden Horn to Constantinople. Leilah looked there also, seeing heads there too, crowding every crenel.

  The hush held … then ended in the fall of the sultan’s hand. Instantly, all was noise – the shriek of dozens of trumpets, the hammering upon scores of huge drums, the ululations of thousands of voices, all seeming to hail some triumph …

  … which came, along with a gasp from every single watcher, as a ship sailed from the forest.

  Though she had been born with the ability to see beyond the veil of things – from before, her mother would say, Leilah’s rhythmic kicks of the belly answers to all sorts of questions – it still sometimes surprised her when her dream visions appeared quite so literally. For she had dreamed this – oars gouging earth, canvas among the trees. And there it was before her, a fusta with all its oars thrust out pulling at the air, its sail bulged by some breath of wind. An officer strode the histodoke, cracking his whip over the heads of the rowers. She could see that these were not the usual slaves, but warriors, armed with helmet and mail, laughing as they rowed. Indeed, all who watched on the Turkish side appeared to be laughing, at a sig
ht so incongruous. She looked again at Mehmet, and he was roaring, his closest companions – beys, pashas and imams – joining him.

  The vessel reached the crest of the hill. For a moment, it perched there, oars still moving above the land. Then, with a shouted command, the five pairs of oxen she now saw were unhitched, and the vessel moved forward again, tipping its prow down the slope. It moved as slowly downwards as it had risen, held, she could see now, by ropes attached to its thwart clamps, many men leaning at a sharp angle back and straining against the pull, letting it slide slowly down the front slope, through the fields. More oxen emerged from the woods, another ship followed, oars digging air, sail full, whip cracking, men laughing.

  She could not help her own smile. But she smothered it when she glanced left and right, saw the shock on the faces beside her. Most were mumbling prayers, crossing themselves. Many had their eyes closed. She could not, of course, see more than the heads of people across the water, but she knew that if there was dismay in Galata, there would be terror in Constantinople. It did not take a Caesar to see that the Christians’ flank was turned. Their boom bypassed, a scimitar now jabbed into their back.

  As the second ship crested the ridge and began its downward slide, the first was already entering the Horn, rolling along a slipway made from logs. The oars dipped air no longer, but water, the trumpets blared loudly, drums doubled their beat and all upon the hill cheered. A third ship was just beginning to emerge from the woods when Leilah turned back to the stairs. Her time in Galata was over. It had been pleasant to become a Christian again for a while, to ply her trade where her unbound hair drew no mutters. But it was time to make her way back to the Turkish camp, and there she would go veiled again.

  Her dreams had not told her what was going to happen next. A major assault upon men in despair that might force a breach? Surrender, when the Christian emperor realised his hopelessness? She must be ready. She had told Mehmet in Edirne a year before that she would come to him for payment on the eve of the city’s fall. She knew what she’d need: a company of soldiers to shepherd her to the library of the monks of Manuel. But her daylight dreams had told her the next part: Gregoras already there, reading the ancient Greek, leading her to the aisle where the writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan waited.