A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Geber’ was what the Christian alchemists called the Arab, and more than any other he had illuminated their darkness. Her former lover and protector, Isaac, would shake with an excitement he never felt in her arms when he thought about the sacred text, the one annotated in Geber’s own hand. The Jew believed it contained nothing less than the formula for al-iksir itself. And with that elixir, man would at last be able to turn all base metal to gold.

  She did not understand the chemistry. But she smiled to herself as she walked. Because certain of the Jew’s correspondents in Basle or Paris would pay a fortune for Geber’s text. So paper would turn to gold – now that was a formula she could understand. Paper transmuting the base metal of her life, meaning she would never need to depend on any man again.

  Any man … She slowed, her smile fading. She was surprised how the simple thought of Gregoras affected her. It was far beyond his use to her. She’d felt him close from the moment the Genoese ships had appeared two days before. She had mumbled verses to protect him during the fight, and cheered along with the Galatans when the Christians had broken free. Now he was back over there, she was sure. In Constantinople. Awaiting her pleasure. Her varied pleasures, she admitted to herself, the smile returning.

  As she resumed her fast pace, pushing through the sullen, silent crowd, she heard the deep toll of a distant bell. From her brief time in the city of the Greeks, she had learned to recognise its solemn note.

  The bell was summoning all to the Hagia Sophia to pray for deliverance.

  ‘And so,’ Hamza concluded, ‘Mehmet, Sultan of Rum, liege lord of all of us, makes this last and most generous of offers to his brother emperor, also his vassal: that Constantine Palaiologos leaves the city with as many of his followers as choose to go with him and embarks straightway for the Morea, to rule that fair land, with his sons to rule after him for ever. To live in amity thereafter with Mehmet, his sovereign lord and fellow emperor. To save, by this noble sacrifice, the most dreaded sacrifice of all within the walls of Constantinople, sparing its citizens the indignities that will come hard upon the refusal of such magnanimity – the loss of all they own, including their lives, the desecration of their temples, the ravishment of their wives, the enslavement of their children.’ Hamza’s tone softened, as he looked from Constantine to the noblemen and churchmen, the representatives of Venice and Genoa, who flanked him in the hall of the old palace of Porphyrogenitus. ‘And know also that any who choose to remain will be treated with the dignity afforded worthy opponents. Free to keep their property and their gold, to trade as they would and enjoy the protection of that trade under the House of Osman. And to worship for ever as they see fit, in their most ancient and orthodox traditions.’ He glanced at the papal legates as he emphasised the word, and away from them at the man he knew to be Loukas Notaras, hook-nosed and fierce-eyed, the megas doux and most strident opponent of the surrender to Rome. ‘All this he promises,’ he continued, his voice rising, ‘and this besides: to honour the glory of Constantinople’s history and to restore it to the dignity it once held, to make it again the foremost city in the world.’

  He made the obeisance of head and mouth and heart, bowed in the style of the Christian, stepped back. Since he had arrived, the day after the launching of the fleet into the Horn, he had been treated with nothing but formality and courtesy. He did not expect outrage or defiance at his offer and he did not expect an answer. He knew he would have to wait for that.

  He was a little surprised that Constantine replied himself, as he usually would only communicate through an intermediary, sometimes several. Their oft-impenetrable protocols had always complicated any dealings with the Greeks. But the emperor raised a hand to silence all others. ‘We thank our sovereign lord Mehmet for kindnesses that his reputation only leads us to expect,’ he said. ‘If the most noble Hamza Bey would care to wait while we discuss his master’s generosity, I am sure we will furnish him with a … suitable response, and soon.’

  Hamza studied the emperor as he spoke. He appeared to have aged a decade in the year since the Turk had seen him last, his brown hair largely abandoned to grey, lines on his face like siegeworks. But the words of courteous reply were underlined with a determination that had not been there before, and a scarcely concealed anger. Hamza had always dismissed Constantine as a soldier promoted by family and situation beyond his talents, as a man capable of weakness. He looked anything but weak now, and looking in his black eyes, Hamza saw the answer he would get – which was truly the answer he was expecting.

  Yet other men around the emperor looked far less certain. Many, Hamza could see, were already turning in to their sovereign, arguments forming on their faces. One of them he recognised. It was his opponent at tavla from Genoa, Theon Lascaris. It was his voice he recognised as a servant ushered him into the antechamber. ‘My lord …’ Theon said, and then the door closed upon him.

  The room was larger than the one it served as waiting room. It contained the entourages of the men within – priests and monks in robes; secretaries in the cloaks of scribes; Italians in their more flamboyant garb; soldiers. One of these caught his eye for several reasons. His armour, which was a mismatch of styles and, indeed, sizes; the bow he held, which Hamza immediately saw would not disgrace his own collection. Mostly, he stared at an oddity.

  The man had a false nose.

  He studied him for a moment – until the man looked up and returned his gaze. Then Hamza turned away, to the table of sweetmeats. It was untouched, had been laid out for his benefit alone, and so was covered with a cornucopia of smoked fishes, meat kebabs, fruits, breads, stuffed vine leaves and pots of what smelled like lamb stew. He knew from his spies’ reports that if the city was not yet starving, it was already running low on many items. And he could tell from the attitude of the men standing nearby, by the concentration of their stares, that none had seen such plenty for weeks. They were under orders not to eat. It was reserved for him, the excess to send a message that was a little insulting in its obviousness. ‘Please,’ he said, calling out so that all who weren’t already turned to look at him. ‘I am fasting, offering this small sacrifice to Allah, most merciful. But that is no reason why this magnificent feast should be wasted. Please.’

  At first, no one moved. Then a man, a portly monk, took a step forward. Another followed. And then, at first trying to appear as if none were in haste, but all at once abandoning the pretence, everyone in the room rushed to the table.

  Everyone except one man, Hamza noticed. The man with the false nose had not moved; he just continued to stare at the Turk. There was something unnerving about it, reminding Hamza of the gaze of one of his goshawks. Shrugging, turning, he knelt facing Mecca and began to pray, trying to shut from his mind the guzzling of some men, and the stare of another.

  He was barely halfway through his third prayer when an opening door, and the blast of language that emerged with it, distracted him. He looked up – to see the diplomat he’d met in Genoa walking towards him. The man gave one dismissive glance to the table and the men moving away with food-smeared lips, reaching Hamza as he hastily murmured a concluding prayer and stood.

  ‘I am to accompany you to the gate,’ Theon said, in Osmanlica, and as tonelessly as if they were picking up a conversation broken off a few minutes before, ‘and to give you the emperor’s answer on the way.’

  For some reason Hamza looked around the room, but the fellow with the hawk’s stare had gone. He focused again on the man before him – and on his own surprise. The rapidity of the response was unusual in itself. Its manner of delivery, unprecedented. There was a ritual to such negotiations. Especially with the protocol-obsessed Greeks. Hamza had expected to be called back into Constantine’s presence at least once more, for debate, for counter-offer, for clarification.

  Theon’s next words, as he led Hamza to the outer door, spoke directly to these thoughts. ‘The emperor is very clear. He will offer the sultan any amount of tribute he may demand—’

  Since pr
otocol had been abandoned, Hamza interrupted. ‘He does not possess anything. And even if he did, there is no amount great enough that would be accepted.’

  ‘Which the emperor knows.’ Theon led Hamza down the stairs, the spurs on the heels of the six guardsmen clanking on the marble after them. ‘Which is why he would not see you again. He is determined to triumph or die. Either rescue will come, by sea or land …’

  ‘It will not …’

  ‘Either it will come, or we will try our strength upon the walls of our ancestors. Die upon them if God so chooses. Conquer upon them if He so wills. We are in His hands.’ Theon smiled slightly as they reached the lower floor of the palace. ‘These are his words. He asked that I repeat them, exactly.’

  Hamza was about to snap back at this diplomatic insult, that he should hear this from the servant and not the lord. But anger was not a weapon he reached for often. It rarely achieved what he wanted. So he took a breath, then spoke. ‘Are they the words you would have chosen, Theon Lascaris?’

  They had emerged from the palace’s rear entrance, into an avenue of pink-petalled trees. The ground was covered in blossom, and Hamza watched a breeze shake more loose and let them fall like a blizzard. Memory came – of Mehmet in his garden at Edirne. The sultan-gardener had been planting trees that he said could be found in the palace grounds of Constantinople. Before Theon could reply to the first question, Hamza asked a second. ‘What is this tree?’

  ‘This? We call it the Judas tree.’ Theon stretched out an arm. ‘Shall we walk?’

  Without waiting for a reply, he barked an order for his guard to remain at the door, then set off down the pink path. Ah, thought Hamza, and followed.

  ‘My words?’ Theon continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘Yes, they might have been different. Your ships in the Horn might have made them different.’

  ‘You counselled your sovereign to go?’

  ‘I did not.’ Theon shrugged. ‘You know as well as I that there are times when one can change a man’s mind with words and others when you are merely wasting breath … and using up credit better spent in a winnable cause.’ He stopped, looked at Hamza. ‘Did you ever try to persuade the sultan against attacking us?’

  ‘I did not. Easier to stick all these blossoms back to the branch.’

  ‘There.’ Theon began to walk again, slowly. ‘As men of reason, we both know what is possible and what is not.’

  ‘It is impossible that you can win this war, my friend,’ Hamza said softly.

  ‘No it is not. Unlikely, perhaps. Your cannon beyond this very wall – stand here for an hour, less, and you will feel the earth shake as a ball strikes. Your soldiers, that you can throw at us again and again. What matters if you lose a thousand? What matters ten thousand? Martyrs for Allah. But if we lose a thousand …’ he shrugged, ‘we lose. And then there is the magic of boats sailing over the hills. Clever of you.’

  ‘Not me. All Mehmet’s doing. He means to have this place. And he is skilled enough to take it.’

  ‘It is likely. But it is not certain. As reasonable men, we both know this.’

  It was the second time the Greek had mentioned reason. Hamza looked away, to falling pink. ‘So what do reasonable men do, when certainty is reached?’

  Theon looked down, and brushed some petals off his sleeve. ‘They consider their options.’

  Hamza studied the man, who was not looking at him, who halted now in the middle of the avenue of trees, as far from soldiers at either end of it as possible. Carefully, he thought, and said, ‘Do you still play at tavla?’

  The other man looked up. ‘My son does. On the exquisite board you gave me. He is quite gifted.’

  Hamza laughed. ‘It could ruin his life.’ He nodded. ‘Your wife. Is she still as beautiful?’

  ‘She … is.’

  There was a hesitation there. Something to do with his wife. Some tenderness to be probed. But not now. ‘And does she still have that gorgeous cat?’

  ‘She does, curse it. I hate cats.’

  ‘Ah, my friend,’ Hamza said, laughing and laying his hand on Theon’s pink-petalled sleeve, ‘you miss out on one of the true joys in life.’

  Theon let the hand lie on his arm for a few seconds, then, glancing to the end of the path and the men there, he withdrew it. ‘Then I will miss it.’

  Hamza glanced too, then continued in a lower voice, ‘I return to my question. What happens when a reasonable man becomes certain? Arrangements would have to be made. You would need a friend.’

  Theon nodded. ‘A friend who is, perhaps, close to the sultan?’

  Hamza smiled. ‘The best kind. One with the power to look out for your beautiful wife, your gamester son.’

  ‘I see. And what would one have to do to earn such friendship?’

  ‘Oh,’ Hamza replied lightly, ‘surely friendship is a gift bestowed, given without obligation?’

  Theon’s tone was not light. ‘Like a tavla board. Yes. So what … gift could be given in return?’

  They had begun to move again, drifting near as slowly as the petals at their feet, closer to the walls, the tower. Hamza looked at it, thought about what it contained – a door set low into the bastion’s wall. A sally port, a way for the besieged to charge out and harass the besiegers. In the early days, before the bulk of Mehmet’s army arrived, the Christians had issued forth and done much damage. Now it was sealed, triple-bolted, with barrels full of stone piled against it, only shifted to admit the sultan’s embassy. Him. Impossible to storm by force.

  But what if it were opened again, quietly, at night? Hamza thought suddenly, excitedly. His master was always talking of the fall of Troy – was not this a form of Trojan horse? ‘This door, that I come and leave by? How is it called?’

  If Theon was surprised by the change of conversation, he did not show it. ‘The Kerkoporta,’ he replied.

  ‘Ah.’ Hamza turned back. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, reaching into the satchel at his side.

  ‘Another gift? Surely the tavla board was generosity enough?’

  ‘This is far less valuable. And yet perhaps its true value is … inestimable.’ Hamza pulled out a folded piece of silk and then, with a flourish, shook it loose.

  It was a banner, a triangle of indigo silk the length of an arm. Emblazoned on it, rushing like comets across an early evening sky, were large silver letters in a cursive script. ‘Do you read Arabic?’ Hamza asked.

  ‘Well enough to recognise your name. You call this your tugra, yes?’ Theon replied. ‘But this, I do not …’ He pointed to other letters.

  ‘It reads kapudan pasha. For I have been appointed to command the sultan’s fleet.’

  Theon sucked in a sudden breath. ‘That is … an honour.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Hamza replied lightly, lifting the cloth to display it. ‘And this was made for me only yesterday, to acknowledge my elevation.’ In a swift move he bunched it up, held it out. ‘I would like you to have it.’

  Theon did not take it. ‘Why?’ he replied, bluntly now.

  ‘Because,’ Hamza said, ‘my new tugra will mark anything I own. Any goods. Any … property.’ He continued, his voice getting softer, ‘You know what will happen if what is uncertain now becomes certain: if the sons of Isaac take this city by storm. As is the custom, they will have been promised three days of pillage as a reward for their sacrifice, their courage.’ He shuddered. ‘It is horrible to witness men turned to beasts. More horrible to suffer their … bestiality. Yet when lust and fury have been served, men remember that what they mostly want is money. And each troop will have such distinguishing marks as these, if more crudely made …’ he raised the balled silken tugra, ‘to lay claim to what is theirs. They will hang them from houses, and everything within their walls will belong to them. Women for their … pleasure. Men and their sons for enslavement … and worse.’ He held out the banner again. ‘But if the house was marked with the tugra of the kapudan pasha, no one will dare to violate it. Or any … property withi
n it.’

  Theon’s fingers folded and unfolded. Still he did not reach. ‘It is most valuable,’ he murmured. ‘What would a friend have to do to obtain it?’

  ‘Oh,’ Hamza said, letting the silk folds fall, beginning to roll the banner up, ‘only act, as a reasonable man does, on a new certainty.’ The silk had returned to the shape of a small cone, and Hamza pointed its end down the stairs. ‘And leave a little door open for his friend to enter in the night.’

  Theon looked away, at the steps that led down into the bastion. He could just glimpse the edge of one of the heavy barrels, pulled back to allow the Kerkoporta to open. Guards looked up at him from there. Without turning back, he spoke in a soft voice. ‘Have you parchment in your satchel you can spare?’

  Hamza frowned. ‘I do, but … Ah! Ah, I see.’

  The Turk replaced the silk into his bag, slipping it between two sheets of the terms Mehmet and he had drawn up for Constantine’s exile from his city. He’d not been allowed to present them. But this is a better use, he thought. He raised the bundle, spoke louder, in Greek for the first time. ‘Perhaps your sovereign lord will at least deign to read our offer?’

  Theon took the papers and tucked them under his cloak. ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, as loudly. ‘I make no promises.’ He looked straight into the Turk’s eyes. ‘None.’

  Hamza smiled. ‘It is enough that they are considered. That is all a reasonable man may ask.’ He made the obeisance, head to mouth to heart. ‘Go with God, Theon Lascaris,’ he said, and then turned, descended the stairs. The Greek guards looked at him with hatred. But they opened the door and he stooped underneath it, for it was low as part of its defence. His own guard awaited him just beyond, and under the flag of truce, they made their way the short distance back to the siege lines.