I was beginning to wonder if one of the thousand locked doors we had passed hid the Pharos Chapel, and if its wonders were not already buried under tons of ancient roofing. When we had at last found the guarded door we sought, we were ushered in, only to find that there was no throne to speak of, only a round-walled chamber with marble columns supporting a mercifully strong-seeming roof, around which a gaggle of men stood, talking loudly and idly picking at a table laden with silver trenchers of food. Silence fell abruptly as we were announced by a man we took to be the chamberlain, and all heads turned towards us. It was strangely like walking into a country tavern where you are not known. Finally the man with the black hair had stepped forward, gestured for our letter, and blinked with amazement. At once the hubbub was restored, the chamberlain had wandered away, and the Regent had come over to meet us.
Anseau de Cayeux studied the letter in silence. Nothing disturbed his placid face save a little twitch of one eyebrow. Then he murmured something into de Toucy s proffered ear. Their eyes met for a brief moment, then the Regent turned back to us.
‘Jean de Sol, Petrus Zennorius. Your visit was unlooked for, but it comes as the answer to our prayers’ he exclaimed. ‘We are… the empire is suffering a small upheaval, temporary of course, and we cannot welcome distinguished guests as we would wish. This.. ‘ he swept his arms around the low-ceilinged room in which we stood. 'These are somewhat sorry-looking quarters, but the roof collapsed in the throne room – fearful builders, the Greeks! – and in a month or two we shall be moving the court to the Palace of Blachernae. Shocking, really. But soon remedied!' And he threw back his golden head and laughed, as if all this – the palace, Constantinople, the empire itself – were nothing but a good-natured prank at his expense.
'Now, come and share our meal’ he finished, and with a familiar hand on our shoulders he steered us over to the table. Taking my lead from the Captain, who appeared entirely at ease, I accepted a goblet of wine and tore the leg off a pea-hen. The room might be shabby, I thought, but the dinner service was quite impressive: ancient silver and gold carved and hammered into scenes of gambolling animals and humans. I wondered how long it would be before it was sold off. Although the Regent and de Toucy were solicitous, the other barons held back, ignoring us or studying us with hooded eyes. Nervous, I tried to ignore them, and instead watched a tendril of carved ivy as it strangled a marble pillar.
‘Where are you lodging, may I ask?’ The Regent was asking a question.
‘We arrived but yesterday evening, and stayed at the house of some Pisan merchants,' said the Captain. We shall take rooms in an inn close by here, God willing – our hosts recommended it.'
‘An inn around here? Good Christ!' the Regent guffawed, then belched. Your merry Pisans must think you have a taste for knocking shops! Nothing wrong with that, nothing at all,' he added. 'But you are the emissaries of the Holy Father, and the King of France, no less. I do not think our local inns can provide you with the milieu that befits your station. You shall be our guests.' He held up a finger, mock-stern, and I knew we had no choice. My heart sank.
We ate and drank quite companionably, despite our somewhat frosty audience. The Regent was a jolly host, indeed, so jolly that I was quite surprised when he abruptly laid down his cup, signalled for a salver of water and washed his greasy hands.
'Now, let us speak in private,' he said, wiping his hands on a linen towel. We were led through a low door at the back of the chamber into a smaller room lined entirely in snow-white marble. There were a number of curious fittings jutting from the wall, and I guessed that this had been a bathing place once. Now, chests covered with heavy tapestry covers were pushed against the walls, and in the centre a stone-topped table stood on graceful iron legs fashioned to look like the limbs of a beast of prey. We were offered folding stools cushioned in bronze silk. De Cayeux, de Toucy and the chamberlain, a silent man with close-cropped grey hair, a large nose and pendulous earlobes, seated themselves across from us.
'Now, gentlemen, welcome again’ said the Regent, fulsomely. 'I trust your voyage here was easy? And you came from… where, by the bye?' ‘From Rome’ said the Captain.
'Ah, how superfluous a question that was!' said the Regent hurriedly. 'But your journey?'
‘Was easy, certainly’ said the Captain. 'Is that not so, Petrus?' He turned to me, eyes signalling me to be alert.
'Indeed, although we caught a damnable headwind that blew against us right across the Aegean’ I agreed, and swallowed, hoping the Franks did not notice my dry mouth.
'And how do you find our city?' asked de Toucy. To my horror, I realised the question was intended for me. I opened my mouth like a codfish, then shut it again. What, by the excised tongue of Saint Eusebius, was I to say? My lords, your programme of destruction has been admirably efficient?
‘The streets are wonderfully clean’ I blurted out. The barons' eyebrows shot ceiling-wards. 'And… perhaps that is an outward manifestation -' I took a breath – 'of the cleansing of the schismatic churches, and the saving of heretic Greek souls.' There. I seemed to be finished.
But the barons were smiling, and the chamberlain leaned forward and regarded me keenly. I saw that those long ear-lobes were robed in silvery down.
'A cleric?' he asked. I had the odd sense that, had he been a hound, his snout would have been carefully sniffing my clothes. Would that I had such a calling,' I gushed. 'No, no, I…'
'Master Petrus is a scholar,' said the Captain, smoothly. 'He is too modest: his learning is equal to his piety. This young man could have served Mother Church faithfully from within. For now, he chooses to do her work out in the world.'
Would that I were as modest as that – but Master Jean is too kind. I am a bookworm, no more.'
'And yet you both look like soldiers,' said the chamberlain. 'De Sol – a Toulousian name?'
'Aquitaine,' said the Captain, crisply. 'My father held estates in Les Landes.' 'And I am Cornish,' I interjected.
'Indeed. Zennor?' De Toucy rolled the word on his tongue as if it had a taste he was not sure about.
'Hard by Falmouth. The most beautiful place on God's earth – save the Golden Horn, of course.'
'Quite. But you have a soldierly air – Hughues is right,' said the Regent. So the chamberlain was named Hughues.
'One may serve the Church with the sword as well as the Word,' I said.
'Amen! Amen to that, young sir,' said the Regent. 'It that were not so, the poncing schismatics would be fouling this great city as we speak. Piety keeps our defenders on the ramparts, but steel keeps the enemy at bay.'
'As to armed men,' the Captain said delicately, 'we were given to understand that the emperor is at this moment seeking to raise a great army.'
‘Which brings us to business!' said the Regent, slapping the table with a meaty hand. 'Now. You bring a letter from the Holy Father, and yet you are not priests. You serve the interests of the King of France, yet you bear no accreditations. Forgive me if I sound churlish, but who precisely do you serve?' For the first time, the jovial face had acquired a hardness, almost imperceptible.
The Captain presented our mission as our hosts studied us with mounting interest. 'And Louis Capet will be immensely grateful’ he finished.
‘Immensely grateful? In what way?' asked the Regent, grudgingly. His face was flushed, and he rubbed the stubble on his jaw as if something had bitten him there.
‘In the only way that could possibly matter to your empire’ said the Captain.
'He would put a price on…' spluttered the Regent, incredulously.
'Oh for Christ's sake, Anseau’ barked de Toucy impatiently. 'This is no time for your piety. Yes, dear men’ he said, turning to us. 'The gift is freely given, if we have your guarantee of the immensity of Louis' gratitude. Now enough talk. I am sure our guests would like to see what they have come so far to… what did you say? Facilitate? Hughues, the key to the Chapel of Pharos, if you please.'
The chamberlain disappeared into the
outer room, and returned momentarily with a great iron hoop upon which dangled a small silver key. The effect was comical, but then, I reflected, here in miniature was the predicament of Constantinople: the delicacy of one race skewered upon the hard brutality of another. We followed the Franks – so I now thought of all these folk, forgetting yet not forgetting that I was one of them, for if I was their brother by what was writ in our blood, in my soul I was utterly different – out through the makeshift throne room and into the dead belly of the palace beyond. The two barons seemed almost as lost as the Captain and I, but Hughues strode confidently ahead. We passed the wrecked chamber with the walls of purple stone and plunged down a wide flight of stairs, then another and another. The palace seemed to be built in tiers that spilled down the hillside towards the sea, and as we descended, so the structure became damper and more decayed. Finally Hughues put his shoulder to a fine wrought-iron gate which shrieked open and painted his white robe with rust. I smelled burning, and in another pace we rounded a corner and entered a high domed chamber. Four guards in imperial livery crouched, playing dice, under a guttering lantern which, although it was broad daylight outside, was the only light in that place. We might have been deep beneath the earth for all I could tell. The guards sprang up and the chamberlain seemed to be about to launch some harangue, but de Cayeux put them at their ease with a lordly wave. Hughues stooped to fit the little silver key into a plain door set into a narrow, round-topped arch. The lock snicked neatly, and the door swung inward on silent hinges. The three Franks crossed themselves and prayed silently, eyes screwed shut. The Captain and I hurriedly imitated them. I looked beyond the door, but there was nothing but a velvety darkness.
The air was thick and stale, but the clear scent of frankincense cut through like a trickle of icy water. One of the guards had lit a taper for the chamberlain, and now he held it before him and stepped over the threshold. Anseau de Cayeux followed, head bowed reverently. The Captain and I hung back politely, but Narjot de Toucy stepped behind us, and we had no choice but to go on into that dead air.
Hughues was touching his flame to racks of candles that stood on either side of the door. Light sprang up, dim at first but growing like a bashful sunrise until the walls, the ceiling, the floor itself began to glow and to throw back the rich candlelight with the gleam of gold. For there was gold everywhere, save on the floor, which was all of dazzling white marble. At first I thought the walls were hammered sheets of the stuff, but as my eyes became accustomed to the light I saw that I beheld mosaics. Every inch of wall and of the columns that held up the domed roof was inlaid with tiny squares that my intelligence told me were glass but that my soul – for if ever a place called out to my soul, it was this chapel – saw as rubies, emeralds, precious metals, garnets. The walls were lined with portraits of standing figures, scores of them, all of them stern. Bearded prophets regarded us, shoulder to shoulder with warriors clad in ancient armour, angels wrapped in their wings or in fire, queens with towering crowns, hollow-cheeked saints. I gasped, and backed into the Captain, who steadied me with a hand. Looking up, I saw that the little cupola in the ceiling bore the likeness of Our Lord, bearded, his face blankly serene, holding out his pierced hands. Either the air in that musty chamber had affected me, or the man who had made this image, far back in some unimaginably deep corner of time, had been possessed by some rare genius, for this Christ appeared, as I stared, to grow as vast as the sky, his arms stretching to embrace the horizon. I gasped.
'Rather extraordinary, isn't it?' said de Toucy blandly. 'Look at all that. The Greeks… profligates, every one.'
At that moment I realised that this tiny chapel, with its encrustations of wealth and elaboration going back through long centuries to its birth at the hands of a Roman emperor, was a last clue to the tortured husk of the palace in which it lay. It must all have been like this once, I thought. Those halls would have been magnificent beyond imagining. The throne room… I shook my head. It had been stripped, like crows and foxes strip a dead sheep. The big beasts had torn off the meat, and the little ones, the ants and maggots, had picked the bones until they gleamed. I remembered the words I had read in the history of the Sieur de Villehardouin: 'the lordly Palace of Bucoleon, a more magnificent building than had ever been seen before.' To my Anna, whose tales of this place came from folk who had known it well, it had been a wonder of the world. And in half a lifetime it had come to this. If raw stone had value, there would be nothing here at all. I wondered if the jolly Regent had already mortgaged it off to the lime-burners. I thought of the city outside. What legion of wonders had been sold off or wantonly destroyed? What glory had passed from the earth, never again to be seen by men's eyes? The air was growing heavy with the scent of beeswax, and my eyes wandered around the figures watching us from the walls, gazing at us through the windows of the past. The chapel itself seemed to be humming, as if we were inside a bell that had been struck a long, long time ago, but in whose metal the memory of the blow still resonated, a ghost of sound.
The chamberlain and the barons were picking their way through the columns towards a golden structure that loomed at the back of the room. I glanced at the Captain. He was watching them too, his eyes narrowed. I shook off my fancies. We were here on business. And without a doubt, every man who had set foot in here in the past thirty-four years had been on business too, like those three men now making a perfunctory genuflection before the altar.
'Here we are’ I muttered to the Captain, just to break the silence. And there, presumably, it is’ the Captain replied. Well, the hound sees the hare. Shall we go on?' 'View halloo’ I said faintly. 'That's the spirit’ said the Captain.
We walked forward, our feet clicking on the time-rounded marble tiles. In the Greek fashion, what I would have called a rood-screen – and doubtless Anna would have put me briskly to rights – formed a complete wall before the altar, pierced by three doors. This wall was populated by a host, nay, a regiment, of painted saints that thronged in tiers, row upon row. Here and there the panoply of age-darkened figures was interrupted by a patch of bare wood, where an icon had been pried out none too tenderly. But the Franks had gone through the central door into the well of darkness beyond, ignoring the paintings. A light flared, and first one candle, then a cluster of them began to flicker upon the altar. We passed through the narrow door in our turn, and stepped into a smaller space. It was a semicircle, and there were three small windows in the back wall, although two had been crudely bricked up and the third shuttered with a piece of slate behind an iron grille so that it admitted nothing but the most minute thread of daylight. There was no mosaic here. The plaster walls were painted black, purple, deep red, with here and there a gold line or band. But behind the altar the wall had been gilded, and from the floor to the apex of the ceiling rose a cross.
Our Lord hung there, His face fixed in as terrible and sorrowful an expression as paint and the hand of man has surely ever rendered. A crown circled His brow, an appalling thatch of murderous thorns that pierced and rent His flesh. The artist had known that blood would soak Our Lord's hair, and showed it limp and wet, clinging to temple and cheek. The body hung, the weight of death already dragging it earthwards, bones and sinews tearing where the nails had pierced the hands and meekly crossed feet. Christ's flesh was pale, almost snow-white, and seemed to hold its own faint luminescence. As the blood had flowed out, so light had crept in to fill the empty places.
Years of training in monastery and school had not prepared me for this. Nor had a lifetime of belief. And the utter loss of my faith, which had come upon me when I fled England, had left a great wound that, I now found, had not yet fully healed. For my first thoughtless impulse was to fall to my knees and cross myself, something I had not done in three long years, and my second was to puke. A burning gout of bile rose in my throat and I would have vomited at the foot of the altar had not some inner discipline, some strength I had not known lay in my possession, caused me to clamp my mouth tight shut and swallow. It was
all over in an instant. The Franks doubtless approved my piety, and the Captain doubtless thought my acting skill worthy of emulation, for he too dropped to his knees and genuflected. I stood up and shook my head, trying to clear it. The oppressive stillness of the chapel was worse in this chamber, and the air was more dead. My head buzzed, and I shook it again. Then a loud clank brought me more or less to my senses. The chamberlain had dragged a large chest into the circle of candlelight, and was fiddling with the lock. Now I saw that the room was lined with such chests, some large, some very small. Some were ornate reliquaries dripping with gems, others plain wooden boxes. The one which Hughues was now working upon was black and banded around and about with many hoops of metal and studded with nails. It seemed to swallow the candlelight, for it had been coated with pitch long ago.
'Do we need a priest for this?' the Regent asked querulously. De Toucy shrugged, and Hughues shook his head. 'Not if we don't touch it.'
'Garry on then, man!' said de Toucy impatiently. The chamberlain went back to the lock, which finally opened with a sound like the snapping of bone. He scrabbled for a purchase on the smooth pitch-covered wood, and with a barely stifled oath managed to heave up the lid. As one we craned forward, like so many peasants at the summer fair, straining for a first look at some two-headed piglet.
There was nothing to see at first, nothing but a black cloth spangled with tiny golden stars. It was as if the chest contained the night itself, I thought, but then Hughues pulled it away to reveal the yellow shimmer of tarnished silver. With a grunt he set his feet like a wrestler, leaned forward, and heaved out a large box. It was evidently quite heavy, for he winced as he set it down on the floor. The Captain dropped reverently to his knees, and I did the same. The Frankish barons darted quick looks at each other, but followed suit, and de Cayeux crossed himself fervently. I regarded the box. It was a cube of silver, somewhat battered with age, its corners rounded and with a dent or two here and there. In fine gilded relief, figures with the delicate poise of ancient carvings I had seen in Rome acted out the Passion. On the lid, a calm Christ, looking young and unconcerned, hung from a slender cross. Hughues bent and kissed the metal, then carefully lifted the lid and handed it to the Regent, who accepted it reluctantly, as if it were burning hot. Then he stepped back, and gestured us over to the box. We rose, knelt again, crossed ourselves reverently, and peered in.
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