A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  He felt it through the soaked deck, heard it too – the timbers tearing apart. Screams confirmed it. ‘Mother of God,’ someone cried, ‘we sink! Jesu, save us, we sink!’ Rising, Gregoras looked back along the vessel. In the flash of the next Turkish shot, he glimpsed what had happened – the fusta had been hit amidships, the ball passing straight through, opening a hole on either side. In the dying glare he saw men already throwing themselves over the sides, most silent, some calling on God to save them. If I was a praying man, thought Gregoras as he stripped his little armour off, I would have time for just ten paternosters before this ship is gone.

  Another thought struck. ‘Amir!’ But he’d left the Muslim praying on the aft deck, and the histodoke that had brought him there was already awash. Gregoras would have to leave him to Allah and hope to find him again in the water. Flinging aside his breastplate, the last of his armour, cursing that he could not even manage his falchion, he ran to a rail and launched himself over it. He did not have far to fall.

  As ever, the water cascaded through the gap in his face. He rolled onto his back, spat it out. ‘Curse them, curse them all,’ he spluttered aloud as he trod water. ‘Curse every captain who has had me on his boat and has tried to drown me. Jesu Christ!’ He swallowed a mouthful of sea water, choked. If I survive this, he thought, I swear to St Anthony that I will walk wherever I want to go.

  Other men were appearing from the broil of water where the ship had gone down. He did not know how well any of them could swim, so made sure he moved away from them. Men could drown others as well as themselves; he had learned that in his two encounters.

  But which way should he go?

  Another gun flashed. He turned about in the water. Where was he, other than close to the north shore of the Golden Horn? He looked away, opposite to where the muzzle flash had come. He must have been facing roughly eastwards, for the great bulk of Constantinople was slightly backlit by the rising sun, below the horizon. He squinted, spat more water out. They’d headed west up the Horn, rowing, in the end, at triple time from Galata harbour. So they could have reached …

  He searched the gloom, and there, he saw it, or thought he did. Further down, away from the dawn, a slightly taller piece of darkness upon the Constantinople shore. The Phanar, the flame in the lighthouse tower extinguished for now to give no guidance to the enemy. It was maybe four hundred paces away if measured upon the land. The currents in the Horn were ever treacherous; but the nearer shore was held by the Turk, and Gregoras had not returned to his city and reclaimed his name to give himself up to the enemy now. To slavery, at the least. Probably to death.

  He rolled onto his front, struck out, his arms sweeping before his chest, his legs driving. Though the waves were slight and he kept his head raised high, he had to stop every twenty kicks to breathe, to spit out water, to check. It was hard to tell if he was getting any closer, and a current was taking him down and west of the city. If it swept him past its walls, he would make landfall on the enemy’s beaches. Taking a deep breath, he flipped onto his back, began kicking hard again, angling against the tug of tide. When he next looked up, limbs and lungs burning, the bulk of the lighthouse was more or less before him. He surged again, and soon his hand hit something solid, bringing pain, flesh scraped off on one of the rocks the lighthouse, in less warlike times, warned ships against. He pulled himself atop it, resisted the current’s attempts to drag him off. But the cool breeze was making him shake near as much as his tiredness, and soon he had to plunge again.

  He lost senses then, only keeping the ones he needed to propel him through the water, and spit it out when it flowed in. He wasn’t even sure of direction now, could only hope that his last sighting still held, that he was moving toward the Phanar. Then, when he thought that he would have to just roll over in the water, was almost welcoming its embrace, a leg hit rock. He looked up and saw the tower ahead of him, and waves splashing over the foreshore it was built upon. With a last surge he pushed for the land, touched it, scrambled onto it, careless of jagged rock that cut and bruised him. Then he was out of the water, stumbling clear of the tide’s final reach, falling onto sand.

  He could have rested there, sunk into the silence that he’d nearly found under the waves. But every wall was watched, and on this morning even more so, with the city’s hopes afloat upon the water. So he was not surprised when he heard a voice ask, in Italian, ‘Are you alive?’

  ‘Barely,’ he replied, and closed his eyes again.

  ‘It is over. They part.’

  Gregoras sighed. He’d nearly fallen asleep, despite the discomfort of the stone corner he was wedged into and the constant cursing of the men alongside him. For the time he’d watched, the battle in the Horn had taken the same course as the one he’d lately been involved in – the swarming of Muslim vessels around their far fewer Christian opponents in higher-sided ships. The continuous attempts to board and their repelling. He’d lived it once and recently and did not need to see it again. He was also very tired.

  But Theodore’s shout – Gregoras had reached the shore near the palace where the old archer stood sentinel – made him drag himself up. ‘Have we triumphed?’ he said, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘As you see,’ Theodore replied, ‘they did not capture any more of us. But their fleet still holds the Horn.’

  Gregoras looked. The vessels were parting, the smaller Turkish fustae and biremes heading towards their new berths in the northern bay and the shelter of the shore batteries that had sunk Coco’s ship. The Christian vessels divided, Genoans and Venetians making for Constantinople and their own harbours.

  Gregoras looked, rubbed his eyes, looked again. ‘Where’s Trevisiano’s galley?’ he asked.

  ‘Sunk, two hours since,’ one of the men said. ‘God save him.’

  Others muttered similar prayers. Gregoras just shook his head. Coco had been a braggart and a fool and the city could suffer his loss. But Trevisiano, the expedition’s other leader, was one of the foremost of the Venetian captains, the first to offer his sword to the emperor, ‘for the honour of God and the honour of all of Christendom’, as he had put it. And he had, according to report, wielded his sword with honour ever since. Not only his countrymen would be seriously dismayed. While enemy vessels in the Horn were a serious wounding to the city’s hopes, the loss of two shiploads of men and this one gallant captain was perhaps a worse one. Gregoras could see in the faces around him what would be on every face in the city this morning: despair.

  Another thought struck him, as he shrugged the borrowed cloak around himself. Though he knew it was ridiculous, he peered anyway, searching the Galatan shore that the enemy fleet was making for. It was possible to make out individual figures, so close was the land opposite. But he could not see a saffron-coloured cloak amongst the crowd. ‘Allah watch over you, my friend,’ he murmured, passing his hand from forehead to mouth to heart, thinking of Amir.

  Theodore was staring at him. ‘Have you turned Turk, boy?’ he grunted irritably. ‘You should be praying to Christ for deliverance. You should be calling curses down upon the traitorous curs who warned the enemy of our coming – that whoreson podesta of Galata, no doubt. You should—’

  A shout, one that spread rapidly along the walls, ended the tirade, had them both looking. ‘What can you see, boy?’ Theodore asked. ‘My eyes are not what they were.’

  The ships had cleared rapidly, each to their respective harbours. Gregoras now noticed a small group of men sitting on the sandy foreshore, guards standing around them with spears and halberds. ‘I see our ships’ crews, those who survived,’ he said, then looked above them, to sudden movement on the ridge. Mounted men were riding slowly over it. In their midst was a distinctive horsetail standard. ‘And I see the sultan.’

  Sound came to them, the ululation from thousands greeting their leader, the deep thump of kos drums, the shriek of the seven-note sevre. Mehmet was acknowledging the acclaim with a raised hand.

  ‘What does he now?’ Theodore queried, l
eaning towards the scene he could not see.

  ‘He has reached the beach. He is dismounting. Men are kissing his feet. He is raising them up, reaching back. I think he is giving them something, gold probably. You can hear the cheers.’ Gregoras licked his lips, cracked, swollen and salty from the sea. ‘And now he is moving down to the prisoners.’

  ‘Holy Virgin, guard them,’ Theodore mumbled.

  Gregoras rubbed his eyes. Now he would see just how important it had been to risk drowning rather than be captured. The war had been distinguished already by the slaughter of innocents, villagers in outlying districts, soldiers in forts beyond the walls, captured, killed. In raids before the vast army descended, he knew that some Greek captains had done the same to Turkish villages. It was one way of war, the terror of it. But there was another way, and many commanders practised it selectively – the showing of mercy to a captured foe. Besides, Christian galleys, like Muslim ones, were crewed mainly by slaves. He had been one himself. And sitting at Mehmet’s feet were perhaps a hundred fine seamen from Venice and Genoa.

  The crowds along the walls fell silent, save for muttered prayers. At a harbour to the side of the Phanar, a Venetian galley, fresh from the fight, had already docked, its crew lining its rails, looking to their countrymen across the water. All, on wood and stone, could see the flash of silver when Mehmet drew his scimitar. Those whose eyes were keen enough saw that sword rise slowly, curving toward the sky, then fall swiftly as if cutting a line through the middle of the prisoners. Immediately, Turks rushed in, parting the men either side of Mehmet’s unwavering sword. To his left, the prisoners were driven at a stumbling run up the slope. To his right …

  ‘Holy Father in His heaven,’ someone muttered nearby, as a groan ran the length of the battlements.

  ‘What?’ snapped Theodore.

  Gregoras tried to get some moisture into his mouth, did so, spoke. ‘Half the men have been taken away, half remain. And they are bringing …’ he swallowed, ‘they are bringing wooden stakes.’

  Groans became screams, shouts of denial, of appeal to God, the Mother, her son. But it did not affect or slow the preparations opposite. ‘What now?’ Theodore whispered.

  Gregoras turned to him. ‘You know what now,’ he said harshly. ‘You have seen impalement, haven’t you?’

  ‘No,’ came the soft reply. ‘God has spared me that before and now …’ he waved a hand over his rheumy eyes, ‘He spares me again.’ He stood straighter. ‘Come, boy,’ he said. ‘We must hasten to the emperor. He will respond to this. He must.’

  Gregoras was about to step away when he heard the drums suddenly stop, heard the first dreadful scream. He did not want to look back, could not help himself. Unfortunately for his sleep, he had seen impalement, so he knew there were two kinds – the slow insertion into a man’s anus, a hideously prolonged death. Or the plunging through chest or back, brutally swift, a sudden, shocking end. Either way resulted in the stake being hoisted up, the victim to jerk out his life in the air.

  He looked – and saw that Mehmet had ordered the swifter method. Wanting the shock no doubt, the screaming of the dying echoing in the screams of those watching them die. And he was not prolonging it either, must have decided that shock was best served fast. One man jerked and died, then five, then ten more, the stakes rising and being planted in the ground like a forest springing straight and fully formed from the earth.

  He was about to turn away when he noticed something, like a flash of reddish light. Looked away, muttered, ‘No, no, no.’ Looked again. Saw.

  He’d never had many prayers for himself, and he could manage none for his comrade Amir, hoisted now, bleeding and breathing his last, his saffron cloak flapping around him. Gregoras closed his eyes to the sight, tried to close off memory … of the way the Syrian would pull the worn cloak around him protectively and shrug off its detractors. No executioner had considered it worth stealing, and for just a moment, Gregoras considered that almost the saddest thing of all.

  They did not have to go far to find the emperor. He’d been watching from the northernmost tower of his palace, above the water gate named the Xyloporta. But they could not get near him, so thick was the press of men around him. A babel of voices came, in screamed Italian, in the accents of Genoa and Venice, in Greek, shouting the unambiguous message.

  Vengeance must be taken. Infidels must die.

  Gregoras watched as the baying crowd pressed in, some getting too close, demanding too violently, needing to be shoved back by the halberd-wielding imperial guards. He could see Constantine trying to speak, failing to be heard. And then there came the sound that all in the city heard every day, many times a day. The great cannon had fired again, and its roar, which just preceded a ground-shifting thump as its stone crashed again into crumbling walls, brought a moment of silence.

  Into it, Constantine shouted, ‘Friends! Subjects! I know what you feel. I feel it too. Our sons, our gallant allies, must be avenged. But we are not barbarians, as the Turks are. Let our response be swift, but of a Christian nature.’ Before anyone else could interrupt, he turned to an officer beside him. ‘How many of the enemy do we hold in our cells?’

  ‘More than two hundred, sire,’ came the reply.

  ‘Hang them,’ Constantine commanded, ‘every mother’s son. Hang them from the battlements, one to each crenel, facing the place where our gallant martyrs gave their lives.’

  Men acclaimed the response, followed the officer, who descended the stairs. The palace’s inner gate swung open into another mob, their cry for vengeance identical. When they heard that their wish was to be granted, they absorbed the soldiers, turned and rushed for the city’s prison.

  As Gregoras and Theodore advanced, they saw that only a few men remained around the emperor. Gregoras recognised the aged Sphrantzes, the megas doux Loukas Notaras, with his bull’s body and weasel’s face. Between the two of them stood his own brother. Theon was engaged in a whispered conversation with both men and did not see Gregoras. The man who did was his old commander, Giustiniani, who leaned into the emperor and spoke softly. Constantine turned, saw Gregoras, and a brief smile passed over the careworn face.

  ‘You were one of many we were already mourning, Gregoras Lascaris,’ Constantine said when the two men drew near. ‘By what miracle have you survived?’

  Gregoras glanced at Theon, caught the brief flash of surprise before the politician’s veil was dropped again. He related, briefly, the tale. ‘Well,’ said Constantine, ‘God must have you in mind for another destiny to show you such favour twice in a month. Stay and share in our discussions now, for I would have men close to me who are so blessed.’ A messenger ran up the stairs, knelt, offered a slip of parchment. The emperor took it, read, coloured. He beckoned his old friend Sphrantzes to him, and they had an urgent whispered conversation.

  Giustiniani called Gregoras. To his left was Enzo. To his right, the space where Amir should have been standing. The Commander spoke straight to this. ‘And where’s my renegade?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  Gregoras shook his head. ‘His cloak now hangs from one of those stakes over there, and him in it.’

  Enzo let out a cry, turned and buried sobs in his sleeve. Giustiniani went white but did not speak for a moment, his jaw moving as if chewing words. Finally he murmured, ‘I commanded him to wash it. Ordered it a thousand times. Told him its stink offended. He disobeyed, the cur. Said that it was the stink that protected him.’ He reached up, wiped a hand across his nose. ‘Well, let’s hope some Turk will wear it soon and choke on it.’ He turned to the weeping Sicilian. ‘Enough now, boy,’ he said softly, reaching a hand to the man’s shoulder, ‘enough. We will mourn him later, and seek his ugly face in the bottom of a dozen wine casks. And we will be avenged. Not in this way …’ he gestured into the city, where the ugly shriek of the mob could still be clearly heard, ‘but in our own, as Amir would have wanted it: upon the battlements in the heat of the fight. And with the enemy in
the Horn and the sea walls now to man as well, I think we will have plenty of opportunities.’

  Gregoras nodded. They had suffered many a comrade’s death before. Death was a soldier’s lot. And the only way to mourn it was as soldiers – roughly, drunkenly. He would raise a flagon to a fallen friend. And he would kill the men who had killed him, to his own dying breath, and be mourned roughly in his turn – if any survived to mourn.

  – TWENTY-FIVE –

  ‘Give Me Mine’

  3 May: twenty-seventh day of the siege

  It began with such a small spark, the fire that almost consumed the city from within.

  Two housewives fighting over a wheel of bread.

  Sofia was there, in the Forum of the Bull, ten paces away from the front of the line. She had walked across the city because of the rumour that the monks of St Myrelaion, to honour their saint’s day, were baking loaves from their private granary and giving it as alms to the poor. And as almost everyone was poor in the city now, Sofia fetched her own bread. She’d stood in one of the long lines for two hours, Thakos and Minerva at her side, the boy clutching his slingshot, proudly acting as her guard. But the closer she got to the three tables, the more what had seemed a mountain of flat loaves diminished. Each family was given one only, though time was spent with many pleading every excuse for one more. There had already been arguments, that family members had split up to get more than their share. A fight had broken out between two men who claimed the other had already been in line and returned. Everywhere Sofia saw the same expression on faces drawn tight by ever-present hunger – an angry glitter in the eye as others got what each desired, a sullen droop to the mouth, bitter thoughts hanging there as unspoken words. She knew her own face had the same expression, that she stared at those who had received and could not wait, stuffing their mouths with bread, needing to swallow repeatedly to suppress her gushing saliva.