A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  She stared at him a moment, deep in his eyes, then squeezed his arms and went inside.

  He turned back to the water, relieved he was free of her shooter’s gaze. For though the memories came as infrequently as her dreams, and lingered less when they did, still something could set them off. Some noblewoman’s surprisingly coarse laugh. The way brown hair fell across a stranger’s neck. A letter from a fallen, rising city.

  Then she’d be there again, as he last saw her; he with her, drawing her out onto the terrace of the house he’d rented in Chios, with Genoan gold. For Giustiniani had not forgotten his comrade in the end, and had paid off Rhinometus’s contract in his will.

  Chios

  21 June 1453: seven years earlier: three weeks after the fall

  ‘Out here,’ Gregoras said, taking Sofia’s arm. ‘I do not want to wake her.’

  He led her onto the terrace, glancing back once at Leilah on the bed. Her eyes were closed again under the bandage and she seemed to be breathing easier. Softly, he shut the door. Sofia had gone to the low wall, from which she could look down on to the harbour. She spoke over her shoulder as he came near.

  ‘Has the fever broken?’

  ‘I … I think so. The salve you brought helped.’

  ‘As did my prayers.’

  Her voice sounded different. Calmer than it had been for a while. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘She’s less hot anyway and was able to eat a little more the last time she woke. She still sleeps near the whole clock round.’

  ‘I think that is good. It is what she needs to heal.’

  Gregoras stared at Sofia’s neck. Her voice was still soft, its quality detached, as if she did not truly care. And yet she had cared, once Gregoras had told her … not all, but a little of what Leilah was to him. Brought broths and poultices. Spared a little time in her prayers. ‘Sofia,’ he murmured, reaching a hand towards her neck, half hidden in falls of dark hair.

  She turned suddenly, took the hand he’d extended. When it came, her voice was no longer dreamy but filled with excitement. ‘Do you see in the harbour, Gregor? Do you see the difference?’

  He looked. It seemed unchanged. The Genoans still readying to depart. Now Giovanni Giustiniani Longo was buried in his simple tomb upon the island there was no reason for the mercenaries to remain. They had offered their comrade a berth, and a contract for their next war. But Gregoras was done with killing. And he would not leave Leilah – nor the woman who was pointing so excitedly now.

  ‘There’s the difference,’ Sofia said. ‘There, next to the Commander’s carrack. That trireme? It arrived this morning.’

  It was not unusual. Various vessels had straggled into the port in the weeks since the fall. ‘What news?’ he asked, everyone’s first question, though the answer was always the same – rumours of disaster, of slaughter, of desecration.

  He was surprised – first by her smile, then by her words. ‘It is commanded by a Greek. Flatenelas.’ Gregoras was about to say he knew the man, but Sofia raced on. ‘But he does not escape from the city. He brings word, from my uncle amongst others. For he has been sent from it. By its new ruler. Mehmet has asked all Constantinople’s citizens to return.’

  He snorted. ‘Has he not got enough slaves that he wants yet more?’

  She frowned. ‘No, Gregoras. The sultan has issued an irade. It says he only ever wanted the city to be great again. He wants all its people to help him in that.’

  ‘Is that what he says?’ He sighed. ‘You know the Turk, Sofia. He will say anything to get what he desires.’

  ‘Which is what? More slaves? You already said he does not need them.’ Her voice was harder now. ‘And why would Flatenelas, a nobleman of the city, do the enemy’s bidding if he did not believe it? No …’ she raised a hand against interruption, ‘do not speak against it. For you obviously do not see what this means.’ She dropped the hand she still held and spread her arms wide. ‘It means I can go back. I can go back and look for my Minerva.’

  ‘Oh, Sofia.’ He paused, seeing the hope he thought she’d drowned in a thousand tears bright again in her eyes. In the escape from Constantinople, in the journey to Chios and their time there, he had held Sofia as she wept, gentled her as she raged, restrained her when she thought to steal a rowing boat and return. Finally convinced her of what he truly believed. For he did know the Turk. They did not take slaves as young as Minerva. They were too much trouble. So they killed them. And if by some miracle one took pity and enslaved her … then the child would already be in a house in some far-off city, being trained to wash floors, cook meals – and await her turn on the slave block when she came of age. It had happened to the woman who lay behind him now and fought with death. It would happen to Minerva – if, by that miracle, she lived.

  He thought he’d convinced her. ‘Sofia,’ he said gently, reaching for her.

  ‘No!’ She stepped away, till her legs touched the low parapet. ‘Do not try … Do not say … what you have said before. I have seen Minerva in my dreams. I have held her in my prayers. I know she lives. And tomorrow, on Flatenelas’s ship, Thakos and I will go and find her.’ She lowered her arms, her voice. ‘Will you come with us?’

  And there it was, the choice he’d known he’d have to make. He’d avoided it, consumed with other priorities. But now that he believed at last that Leilah would live … here, looking into Sofia’s dark eyes, he did not know what to do.

  She saw his arms rise towards her, fall away. Saw the torment in the eyes above the ivory nose, the gaze that rose over her head. She saw it and knew what she had only glimpsed before through her agony: the whole that had been hers entirely was divided in half.

  She was thankful that her knees rested against the parapet. She would not fall. And while she waited for her strength to return, while she saw the eyes she loved seek an answer among the clouds above them, she knew this: she could win him back. But she would not try. He had chosen another. Though the thought brought red heat to her brow, that receded swiftly enough. For she had chosen another too. And she still loved him enough to tell him who that was, to try to lessen his pain, of which he’d had excess.

  ‘Gregor,’ she said softly, taking his hand, ‘you cannot come. I know that. And I do not …’ She swallowed, recovered. ‘I do not need you to come. My family is still there, and those that survived are already making their peace with their new ruler. No.’ She raised a finger to his lips to hold in his words, and continued, ‘And I have someone else, someone else I made this vow to: that if my children were spared, I would give her my life. She has. So I will.’

  He studied her for a moment, then spoke. ‘You are talking of the Virgin now, aren’t you, Sofia? Giving her your life?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. The Holy Mother. Who knows all about the saving of children.’

  He hesitated on the thought, then said it anyway. ‘You only have Thakos. Minerva … you cannot know that she lives.’

  Her smile flooded her face in light. ‘But of course she does,’ she cried.

  Another cry came like an echo from beyond the door. He turned to it … but Sofia held his hand and did not let it go. And when he turned again to her, she raised his hand and kissed his palm. ‘Live in God’s love, Gregoras,’ she murmured. ‘And in mine, for ever.’

  Then she was walking away, down the steps of the house. Another moan from within pinned him on the porch, but he could not help his words. ‘And Thakos?’ he said. ‘My … my …’

  Sofia stopped, looking back up from the path. ‘My son has not stopped weeping since that day. And he rarely sleeps. He is convinced now that his … his father died valiantly, fighting Turks. I do not think he would take the news well that he is not …’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps later. When he is older. Not now.’

  She turned, began walking again. He wanted to run after her, but he found he could not move. All he could do was call. ‘I will come to the docks tomorrow. I will see you both safe aboard.’

  But she did not stop this time, did not look back, did no
t reply. Only a hand rose and fell to show that she had heard him. ‘Sofitra,’ he murmured, watching until the twilight swallowed her.

  Ragusa

  1460

  He hadn’t gone to the docks. Couldn’t, when he was not sure what he would do there. And just as the tide was turning, Leilah had woken suddenly, and hungry. While she’d fed, he’d made some excuse, gone onto the terrace. But the ships bound for Constantinople were already small upon the sea and soon vanished entirely.

  A noise brought him back to the present, footsteps. ‘Momma left me!’ the boy cried, tottering onto the terrace. His outrage had already been soothed away – but he wanted to inform his father.

  ‘You were sleeping, Constantine,’ Leilah said, following, bending to scoop him up. ‘You were dreaming too.’

  ‘Good dream.’ The boy rubbed still sleep-laden eyes, then looked up. ‘I shot your bow.’

  ‘Did you?’ Gregoras smiled. ‘Would you like to shoot my bow now?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  Gregoras kept it there on the terrace, as men of Ragusa who lived beside its walls must do, in case of sudden attack. Between him and it rolled the letter from Constantinople. Gregoras bent, picked it up. ‘This is a message for the sirens, Constans. Shall we send it to them on an arrow?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ the boy cried again, struggling out of his mother’s arms.

  There was no danger of hitting one of the swooping birds that they’d told him were sirens, who tried to lure sailors onto the rocks below. Gregoras stood in the centre of the terrace, so he would clear his own low wall and the city one beyond it, Constantine within the circle of his arms, one hand round his father’s bow ring, the other clutching halfway down the archer’s forearm. Leilah wrapped the paper cone tight round an arrow shaft, bound it with a thread, handed it to him.

  Gregoras notched it, pulled the string back, aimed high. ‘Now?’ he asked.

  ‘Now,’ the boy cried, and together they sent the arrow and its message arcing above the great stone wall. A swallow dived at it, then spun away with a flash of white belly, flying high, up into the bluest of all skies.

  Strathspey, Scotland

  The same day

  ‘Ye infidel bastards! Will ye not give me some peace?’

  It was extraordinary. In the twenty years since his leaving, his home glen had become a place akin to paradise, where the light was always honeyed, the air fragrant with heather and gorse droning with bees and grazed by magnificent red-chested deer, the clear streams filled with silvery trout who needed but a bend and a scoop to transform into a feast.

  So how, by the bearded balls of a sultan, thought John Grant, had he remembered all that but forgotten the bloody midges?

  He could admire neither scent nor sights while he was flailing his arms, trying to drive off great clouds of nipping evil. Not that flailing did much good. In fact the heat he generated by the activity, and the sweat that it produced, which ran from sopping head and on down to soak his fine cambric shirt, seemed only to encourage the beasts. So goaded was he that more than once he’d reached for his long sword – only to remember each time that it was holding down papers on the table in his rooms at the university of St Andrews.

  He stumbled swatting on, up. Then either the height he’d reached or some change in the atmospherics drove the monsters away. He paused, took a breath. The summit of Craiggowrie was but a hundred paces further. He’d eaten the walk as the midges had eaten him.

  He pushed on, crested the ridge … and stopped dead. In his youth, he’d been up there in all weathers, when driven snow tried to blast him off, or mist sought to lure his foot into a fall. But he’d always liked it best like this, with a cooling breeze tempering the late summer heat, a wind he could open his eyes and look into.

  He’d come here twenty years before, on a day like this, the one when he’d taken to the self-exile’s road. And the view had not changed – perhaps a few less trees in the forests of Glenmore and Abernethy as man took timber for the town of Aviemore, which had swollen to either bank of the Spey. To the south the same mountains filled his sight – Craig Dhubh and Dhubh Mor and, taller than them all, Cairn Gorm itself. While to the north, small mountains the size of the one he stood upon rolled away, to a distant, unseen sea.

  ‘Craigelachie.’ He murmured the word that he used to shout, seeking among those peaks for it. He had never been. The Grants had given up that land, that hill where the beacon of war would be lit and around which the clan would rally, hundreds of years before. The name still inspired them, but they had mainly settled here, below his perch, spread along both banks of the Spey; thrived there. It was known that if you walked into Aviemore and threw a stick, you’d hit five Grants. It was not advisable, though, even for a long-lost cousin, for they were a quarrelsome clan.

  He looked down, seeking. There, in a fold of forest beyond the town, something glittered. Sun striking Loch Mallachie, warming the walls of the house … there! He saw, or thought he did, a line of smoke. Too hot a day for the fire to be for warmth. His father would have one set beneath a cauldron – if he yet lived. If he did not, one of John’s younger brothers would, certain.

  His gaze went north again. ‘Craigelachie,’ he said, louder, though he did not seek it now. He’d cried it often to conjure his own fire, and never more than on – and beneath – the walls of Constantinople. He’d been thinking of that place more frequently since his recent return to his homeland, in a way he had not done in the seven years since the city fell, through all the places he’d travelled, and those he’d stayed – Basle, Milan, Paris. Maybe because what he’d found there had finally let him end his exile and come home.

  He smiled as he recalled the expressions on the faces of all his old tutors at St Andrews when he’d fetched up earlier that summer. Their memories were as long as their grey beards, and the student Grant had blown up a valued barn before he’d precipitously left. Yet that was forgotten, or at least put aside, when they saw what he returned with. Not his diplomas from the finest schools of Europe, though they impressed. No. What he added to their library, his booty from Constantinople, would have built a hundred barns. It had certainly won him the title of Doctor Illuminatus and a place for study and experiment … a long arrow shot from the main buildings.

  He’d forgiven himself for stealing the Geber almost immediately. His noseless friend had had little time for it before the town was sacked … and afterwards? He was otherwise concerned. Gregoras had seemed content with the treasure he’d collected. He had the golden bounty he’d been promised for the saving of John Grant’s life. He had the girl – though he came by her in a most strange manner. Besides, Grant had returned the favour and saved his life, and the lives of those he loved, by getting them out of the city. They were even, and the work of Jabir ibn Hayyan, annotated in the Arab’s own hand … well, that was his bounty. And his future too. One of unceasing study – and perhaps the odd explosion.

  The midges had found him again – and it was time to be leaving anyway. The sun would be up for a while yet in this season of the year, but his family ate at the same time each day, sun or snow. After twenty years, he was looking forward to a meal by his own hearth.

  Walking swiftly down a deer track through the gorse, he collected the large bag he’d left under a tree, and made his way around the base of the mountain. The path through the forest was still there, and brought him out to the edge of his family’s fields, filled with ripening barley. Through feathery stalks he could clearly see the farm. He’d been right. The smoke came from a small barn beside the main house.

  He saw her first, in the yard, feeding chickens; saw the twenty years in her grey hair and her stoop. But the face his mother raised at his call was unlined, and the smile exactly as he remembered. She had to sit for a time and have her weep, but when she was ready, she led him across the yard. ‘Look who’s come,’ she said, pushing open the barn door.

  The air was heavy with the savour of heating malt. His father sat before the cauldron
, feeding wood to the fire, and John Grant was sure it was the fug and the flames, nothing else, that caused his father’s eyes to fill with water. He rose from his stool, hovered a moment, a hand raised before him, then sat back down. ‘Where have you been to?’ he said, turning away to shove another log in.

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘Aye? And for how long are you back?’

  ‘A time.’

  His father looked up again, studied his eldest son for a moment – his rich quilted cloak, his fine stitched shirt, the silver buckles on his boots. ‘Good,’ he said at last. ‘Because it’s about time you began to learn the trade. A man cannot make his way in this world without a trade, son. Do you know that?’

  ‘I know that, Father.’

  ‘Good.’ The older man gestured to the pile of malted barley laid out on planks nearby. ‘That is the alpha – the finest barley grown under God’s good sun. And this,’ he said, reaching beside him and lifting a large stoppered jug, ‘this is the omega.’

  He uncorked, took a sip, then passed the jug across. John Grant raised it to his lips. But before he drank, he inhaled deep. And he knew, even before he tasted it, that he was truly home at last.

  Mucur, Central Anatolia

  The same day

  There was not much left to do, so he would do it now, although the light was fading and his family would be impatient and scold him for delaying, once again, the evening meal. But the day had lost its smothering heat, and the last corner of his field could be finished in the little coolness that had come, in the whisper of wind stirring the grey poplar trees at the field’s edge before passing over him, a hint of the season approaching in the one near ending.