A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘And why would I do that?’ He smiled faintly. ‘It would be hard – but you notice I do not ask you how.’

  She smiled back. ‘From the moment I met you, when you rescued me from those thugs in Ragusa, I knew you were the chosen one, the man of destiny who would do what I needed done. And as for why?’

  She lifted his hand, licked the length of one finger, teeth closing briefly over its tip. ‘Will you not do it for love, my lover? For the rewards I can offer?’

  He freed his hand, ran the finger down her face, withdrew it, turned away. ‘I cannot. Not … not just for love. There are people in the city …’ he hesitated, ‘people I … care for. If it does fall, I must protect them. And if you have some way of doing that, then …’ he shrugged, turned back, ‘then we may have a deal.’

  Care for? she thought. He was going to say ‘love’. A flash of the aristocratic beauty’s face flung red into Leilah’s eyes but she swallowed the jealousy down. ‘The troops that Mehmet gives me I can lead anywhere. To a house, perhaps? They will protect any inside it if I order them to.’

  Gregoras shook his head. ‘And how do you have such power over a sultan?’

  ‘He owes me a boon.’

  ‘For what?’

  She did not answer straightaway. Instead she stood, reached to the tent’s ceiling, plucked a parchment from it. Then she bent to the brazier, held the papyrus above it. Immediately it began to crisp, then burn. Holding it till flames seemed to swallow her fingers, when the paper was ash, she dropped it into a copper tray. ‘For his victory,’ she whispered, not looking at him.

  Gregoras stood too, turning away from her, needing to bend under the roof as she did not. He was suddenly chilled, despite the warmth in the tent, and he began to hastily pull on his clothes. He was a soldier, an educated man. He did not set much store by the seeing of witches. And yet …? This reunion. The way they were bound together. And there he was – about to do a witch’s bidding.

  He knew he would do it, though there was a part of him that burned to even contemplate his city’s fall. Yet she was right – a wise man prepared for the possible. A soldier scouted a line of retreat. A thought came, and quadrupled. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said, turning, starting on the buttons of his doublet. ‘A better place than a house.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘It is a church, a small one: St Maria of the Mongols. It is half a league from the Blachernae palace, less. About the same distance from the monastery. It does not look much like a church from the outside, and a high wall surrounds it. A few determined men could hold it for a short time … until protection arrives.’ He hesitated. ‘I may not be one of those men. I may be delayed – or dead upon the walls. If so …’ he leaned closer to her, ‘in exchange for this text, all within the walls must be protected. All.’

  She studied him. He was speaking of this lady now, perhaps her children. Well, she thought, if he is dead and the woman gives me my great desire, I will protect her and hers. But if he lives … I will win him from anyone.

  Reaching down, she rubbed her hand between her legs before raising it to his brow. He felt the slickness upon them as she slid her fingers down, making his eyelids sticky, passing over his ivory nose. ‘So,’ she said, as she did, ‘I believe a bargain has been made. And sealed,’ she added, pressing her fingers onto his mouth.

  He could taste the two of them, conjoined. It excited, as much as it disturbed. ‘Leilah,’ he murmured, reaching up his own hand to hers.

  But she slipped away, bent to a box, opened it. There were inks within, a stylus, scraps of paper. ‘Draw me a map to your church. Draw it from the gate of Charisius.’

  He wiped his mouth, bent, sketched. It did not need much, so close to the walls was the place he’d named. When he finished, she took the paper from him, and replaced it with another. ‘This is a copy of the front piece of the book you seek.’

  He studied the cursive script. He spoke very little Arabic, read less. But he could see the name in a signature: Jabir ibn Hayyan.

  ‘Will you be able to find it?’

  He looked up. It was the first time he’d heard anything other than complete certainty in her voice. He nodded. ‘I was not always an ugly soldier. There was a time when I knew my way around the libraries of Constantinople.’ Besides, he thought, but did not say, I know an alchemist. ‘I will find it for you.’

  She took his hand, kissed it. ‘I know you will. For …’

  ‘… it is written,’ he said, as she did. And they both laughed. ‘Leilah …’ he whispered then, ‘there is something …’

  There had been a murmuring under their talk, a building background they had ignored. But they could not ignore the rising clamour that ended in a huge shout. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling on a dress, a headscarf, a veil.

  He finished dressing too, slipped into his boots, wound his sword belt round his waist. When they were both ready, they stepped out of the tent.

  No one noticed them, though there were plenty of men about. All of them were facing east. Not in preparation for prayer, though some had dropped to their knees. Her tent was on top of a hill, and they could see down over the canvas city to the stone one beyond. To Constantinople, where man’s weapons had been succeeded by God’s, as lightning bolts fell.

  She took his arm. She whispered, ‘Signs and portents.’

  – THIRTY-ONE –

  The Cursed City

  24 May: forty-eighth day of the siege: later

  Those who were not on the walls – defending them, repairing them – were in the streets. For the longest time Sofia, shuddering as she remembered the other crowd she’d been caught in three weeks before, could not make herself step from the portico on the edge of the Forum of Constantine. But though this crowd was large, it was quiet as it shuffled slowly forward, the eyes of the people lifted to the heavens from which lightning had only just ceased to fall, their arms falling rhythmically onto their chests, their mouths moving in prayer. They were not there for bread. They were there for the Virgin. And when the statue was borne past, when Sofia glimpsed her husband among the courtiers who attended the emperor as he walked, head bared, just behind the bier, she grasped each of her children firmly by the hand and plunged into the procession.

  The crowd was thick, yet all took care for their neighbour and her fears soon calmed. Not so Thakos, her sensitive son, still with the slight limp that was the bread riot’s legacy, the tic that came every little while, as if he was always startled. So many of the children of the city jerked thus, and looked like him. Thinned by lack of food, shadowed around the eyes from too little sleep, and that little disturbed by the ceaseless play of guns. He never stopped looking about him as if seeking someone, and held her hand tight to the point of pain.

  It was different with her other child. She had to be held, for Minerva would happily have slipped away to run among the mob. Her dauntless daughter, five and unafraid. Sometimes Sofia wondered at what children took from their parents. Thakos was bold Gregoras’s son, and Minerva the child of cool Theon, yet both could have sprung from the other’s seed. And both from her, of course, and maybe that was what made them. Her ardour in the one, her reserve in the other.

  Holding tight, held tight, she looked ahead. First to her husband, a few paces back from the emperor, behind the priests but many places closer than he would have been before the siege began. He had made himself valuable. It was he whom Constantine had just sent to reject the latest demand to surrender. It meant she seldom saw him, which she did not truly mind. It also meant that, on occasion, their children were better fed than those of her neighbours, with scraps from the imperial table.

  She looked beyond Theon, above Constantine, to the moving platform that preceded them. At what – who – was upon it. And then her voice joined with those around her and she forgot that she was a mother and focused instead on another. The statue was life-sized, the face so exquisitely rendered that it did not seem to be plaster and paint but living flesh. Holy Maria was among t
hem, above them yet connected to them, leading them, not carried by them, alive in every one of them. Christ’s mother, the protector of them all, and her city was Constantinople, as it had always been, as it would be for ever, she the mother of it and every single soul within it.

  And this her day of days. It was always important. Yet all knew how much more in need of her protection the city was this day. All knew that the final crisis was upon them, that the Turk was making preparations for one great assault. So the journey she took yearly, from her home at the Church of the Holy Apostles, along the Meze and through the great forums to the cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, had a special meaning today. That was why all who could be spared from the walls followed her now. It no longer mattered who professed the Roman creed and who the Greek. They were all her children, as Christ was, brothers and sister under the Cross, however it was shaped.

  ‘Holy Maria. Holy Mother. Listen to our prayers. Stay by our sides. Deliver us from all evil. Save us sinners. Save us. Save us. Save us.’

  As she intoned the words, Sofia felt her limbs ease. It was ever thus for her, but usually the release came when she was where another Maria was reverenced, at St Maria of the Mongols. Often alone there, tending the holy place, she could surrender to the mystery, yield herself, lie before the altar screen, stare up at the ikons, pray and weep. She was less open when others gathered there, less comfortable in a crowd. The Holy Maria was her mother, and alone Sofia heard her speak in her heart.

  And yet? Here she was, in a vast crowd, and she felt the feeling come over her. Never had she needed it more. Not for herself. For her city, which she loved. For her children, who she would see live free there. For all her family who had lived there for a thousand years, she believed, and would, by Christ’s good grace, for another thousand and more. She looked up to the Virgin’s face, as it turned towards her when they rounded the corner. She saw the Virgin’s tears, felt them as that and not as the raindrops that had begun to tumble again from a tormented sky. Saw her sad smile, saw in it her compassion for all.

  ‘Holy Maria. Holy Mother. Listen to our prayers. Stay by our sides. Deliver us from all evil. Save us sinners. Save us. Save us. Save us.’

  And then she saw it. The fear in the Virgin’s painted eyes. As if she was looking straight at Sofia, appealing to her alone, in unspoken words that passed straight into her heart. ‘Save me,’ the Virgin cried, as she began to fall.

  It was such a little misstep. Theon saw it because he happened to be looking at him, the oldest of the bier bearers, marvelling at the pure whiteness of his long beard. Ten men bore the Virgin up, priests all, the handles of the platform distributing the weight amongst them. They were not all as old as the one Theon looked at; most were younger and as vigorous as any man, black beards flowing over their robes. It made him angry again – how could a city where priests and monks outnumbered soldiers four to one be defended? Yet he knew they had their function too. Monks watched the walls while warriors slept, and were the main movers of materials for repair. Priests? They did what they were doing now. Kept the eyes of the people focused ever upwards, to God and His protection. To the Virgin, whose special care the city was. The mass of people truly believed that between them – Holy Father, Holy Mother – Constantinople was safe. That any invader, even if he breached the walls, would be smitten with divine fire on the very threshold of Santa Sophia, the archangels leading a counterattack that would drive the infidels to hell.

  Theon was not so sure. It was not that he did not believe, did not pray. But only that day he had been beyond the walls to the enemy’s camp. He had counted till the numbers were beyond even his counting, had seen how strong that innumerable horde was, how well fed and armed. Had seen the monstrous guns close to, looked back at what ruins those guns had made of the city’s vaunted defences, and the pathetic melding of mud and timber thrown up in their place. It was the first time he had truly feared, even as, on behalf of his emperor, he rejected the offer the sultan had made, noting by the ill-disguised relief on Mehmet’s face that it was one never meant to be accepted. Even as Theon made an unacceptable counter-offer in his turn. Both sides knew they had gone past the point of compromise, if such a point had ever existed. Then he had looked beyond the gloating sultan to his shadow, the man he had met twice before – Hamza, a pasha now, wearing the arms and insignia of the admiral he’d become.

  They had not spoken. The Turk obviously saw no need. His comradely smile was enough, his knowing eyes. We will be in your city in days, the look said. Taking care of our friends. And, to his shame, the first thing Theon did on his return to Constantinople was to check that no one in his household had disturbed, in its hiding place, the gift Hamza had given him. The banner with the Turk’s tugra upon it was safe. And if valiant defence and ceaseless prayer yielded to incredible odds …

  It was while brooding on this, even as his lips moved in prayer for salvation, that Theon’s eyes fixed on the oldest of the bier bearers, on the cumulus whiteness of his beard. Saw the stumble, a slip of foot on stones slickened by ceaseless rain. Saw the next man ahead try to adjust to the sudden shift of weight, fail, the man ahead adjust more, fail. Saw the Virgin’s eyes, till then fixed on heaven and the mercy she was seeking for them all, swivel to the earth.

  She fell. Slipped off the side of the platform, her base pivoting off the bearer to her left, who tried to halt her and could not, succeeding only in accelerating her spin, so that her hooded head was pointing down and she plunged like a jab of lightning towards the earth. Enough hands reached in panic to slow her, so that she did not shatter her plaster face on the ground. But she landed hard, stood for a moment as if balancing, then toppled over.

  Prayers fractured into screams, into howls of horror, terror, despair. ‘Holy Maria! Virgin Mother! No! No! No!’ It was all their mothers lying in the filth, as the sky, which had darkened as they advanced, began to spew wind-whipped rain.

  The emperor came out of his horror first. ‘Up! Up!’ he cried, striding round the bier. ‘Cardinal! Patriarch! All of you. Join me. Raise her!’

  Ten paces back, Sofia tried to push forward. But the crowd was as united in horror as that other had been in hunger and formed as impenetrable a wall before her. So instead she stepped to the side, pulled her children, did what she could do. Fell onto her knees, heedless of filth. Prayed. ‘Holy Maria. Holy Mother. Rise. Rise and save us.’

  She was one of scores, lamentations poured into the louring sky. But prayers will not do this, thought Theon, who had pressed forward with his emperor and saw that desperation was making people pull and push in opposite ways, too many leaders there, of Church and State, trying to command. ‘Leave her,’ bellowed Constantine finally, and men at last stepped back. ‘Only you, my guard,’ he yelled, and his own soldiers stepped forward, bent, and at his command and with his aid, lifted. The virgin came up, wobbled, was held firm. The platform was raised again, onto guards’ shoulders now, and the statue, its face besmirched, placed upon it.

  ‘Forward!’ commanded Constantine, at the head of the bier, Theon at his side. All knew the impression that the people would have taken. It was a ghastly omen at the very moment when all needed the very best. The emperor had to counter it, to proceed to St Sophia and the ceremony there. Despite the horror, most people would not have seen the fall. Maybe something could be saved.

  And then the storm, the latest, the mightiest, fell fully upon the city. The wind had changed, drove from the east now, filled with the water it had lifted from the Black Sea. Theon smelled the salt tang of it, even as it smashed into him and all there, drenching them in moments. Constantine exhorted, cardinal and patriarch shouted, prayers were snatched away by the wind. To no avail. It was as if the Virgin, having fallen in that spot, refused to leave it. They had progressed not ten paces before the statue began to wobble.

  ‘Lord,’ cried Theon, shouting to be heard, ‘she must not fall again. We must take her back. Try later!’

  Constantine stared at him for a long mome
nt, then looked up to where Maria swayed. ‘You are right,’ he yelled back, then reached to the captain of his guards and bellowed in his ear. The command was passed, the bier was lowered, the Virgin steadied then lifted from her place. Sofia, who had followed despite the rain and two complaining children, had pushed her way close through a crowd that the sudden violence of the storm had thinned. She was a few paces away when the Holy Mother was brought to the ground. She saw the guard take off his sodden cloak and throw it over the statue. Saw the Virgin’s muddied face just before it was covered. The rain had battered it, unfixed its paint, and from her dissolving eyes Maria shed black tears.

  Sofia sobbed. Then she took a deep breath and pulled her children away from the sight, through the wailing mob. I know where she still stands, she thought. And I will seek her there.

  With the wind now at her back and the rain pushing her forward, Sofia began the long walk to St Maria of the Mongols.

  25 May: forty-ninth day of the siege

  ‘Could you kindly explain to me, Greek, why we are groping around here like the blind?’

  The Scotsman’s voice came from no more than an arm’s length away. Yet the Scotsman himself could not be seen. ‘Shh!’ said Gregoras.

  ‘Shh?’ queried John Grant. ‘Shh because you think there’s more than you and me here, or—’

  ‘I am trying to find our way, man.’

  ‘Are you another Greek like Theseus, with Ariadne’s thread in your mitt? That may be the only way through this pig’s ordure of a fog. Or are you sniffing our route out? No, sorry, forgot. Sniffing’s not your strongest ability, is it?’

  ‘For the love of Christ, will you stop talking?’

  ‘Oh, and is it Christ’s work we do here? When you dragged me from my important tasks with whispers and nods, I thought it might be the other fella’s work we were about. Certainly this fog could only be the devil’s own creation.’