by Judith Tarr
Jehan stared, and laughed amazed. “You’re a rich man. You. If only the Brothers could see you now!”
“Thank God they can’t, I’m written down in the City as Theophilos Akestas, Greek, doctor, and adopted heir of a minor noble house.” Alf shook his head, torn between pain and mirth. “There’s irony in heaven and high amusement here below. It serves me right, says Thea, for being such an insufferable saint.”
“Bishop Aylmer will laugh till his sides ache.”
“He always has been certain that I’m one of God’s better jests.”
“He thinks the world of you.” Jehan looked down at the unfinished letter and grimaced. “If you’ll give me a moment to finish this, we can talk for an hour after.”
“Finish it then by all means,” Alf said.
Jehan bent to his task. The attack will commence before the Ides of April. He paused to dip his pen in the inkpot. With regard to the quarrel between Father Hincbald and the Abbot of Marmoutier…
Slowly Alf walked around the tent. Before the Ides of April. And March already at its end.
He stopped in front of an ornate crucifix and crossed himself without thinking. The tent walls seemed to close about him. Too many men had dwelt in this place for too long with too little care for cleanliness. And war, war everywhere, a great surge of power and purpose bent upon destruction.
“Alf. Alf, are you all right?”
Jehan was shaking him, peering anxiously into his eyes. “I left the City to get away from this,” he said irritably: “fates, prophecies, and the firm conviction that the walls are about to fall on me.”
His friend said no word, but led him out into the free air. He drank it in great gulps, turning his face to the sun that now seemed less an enemy than a long-sought refuge.
Little by little his mind steadied. He smiled at Jehan a little wanly. “Someday, my friend, I’ll manage to get through a day without scaring you out of your wits.”
“I’m not scared. I’m used to you.”
“I hope I gave you time to finish your letter.”
“It’s done.” Jehan held up a worn and shabby hat adorned with a palm of Jericho. “Here’s what you came for.”
Alf took it and set it on his head. Arm in arm they walked through the camp, down to the shore of the Horn.
Men swarmed there, repairing and refurbishing the fleet: Saint Mark’s mariners, with scarcely a glance to spare for a Frankish priest and his companion. They found a place of quiet amid the tumult, a curve of sand around a pool but little larger than the basin Alf bathed in.
Jehan slipped off his sandal and tested the water. “God’s feet! It’s cold!”
“It’s still winter in the sea.” Alf lay on his cloak, hands laced behind his head, hat shading his eyes. “In the City the earth is waking to spring. The almond tree is blooming in our garden; the children are making me teach them spring songs.”
“Love songs?”
Alf glanced at Jehan, half smiling. “Irene asks for them. Anna groans and endures them. They’re pretty enough, she admits.”
“Especially if you sing them.”
Alf’s only response was a smile. Jehan sat and watched him, asking no more of him than his presence. The Horn stretched beyond him, aglitter in the sunlight, dividing the Latin shore from the walled might of the City.
“You know,” Jehan said slowly, “you’re an Akestas now. A Greek. An enemy.”
“No, Jehan,” Alf said, “not an enemy.”
“That’s not what anyone here would say.” Jehan leaned toward him, intent. “Alf. Don’t go back there. You don’t have to fight, just to be here with your own kind.”
“And what of the Akestas?”
“They can leave the City. Don’t they have kin in Nicaea?”
Alf shook his head. “They won’t go. Nor will I.”
“You’re all mad. There’s war coming, can’t you see? War! If we win you’ll be condemned as a traitor. If we lose, the Greeks will turn on you, a Latin in Greek clothing. Either way, the Akestas will suffer for harboring you. Do you want that?”
“They won’t leave their city. I won’t abandon them. They’re my family now, Jehan. I’m bound to protect them.”
Jehan stared at him. He was Alf still, but he had changed. Jehan remembered how he had felt in Saint Ruan’s when he learned that Alf was gone and that Thea had gone with him. Angry at first, and jealous, and stricken to the heart.
One did not keep a friend by clutching at him. King Richard had said that, without even Jehan’s assurance that one day he would see Alf again.
And yet. “There’s no safety for you in Constantinople. Won’t you see sense just this once, and escape while you still can?”
“I can’t,” Alf said.
“You don’t want to.”
“Maybe not.” Alf rose and began to walk aimlessly. The other scrambled to follow him. He did not pause or glance aside. “Jehan,” he said after a time, “Brother Alfred is dead. He can’t rise again. It’s not fair even to ask him to.”
“I’m not. I only want you to be safe.”
Alf gripped his arm and shook him lightly. “I love you, too, brother. But I don’t need a keeper.”
“You need a good whipping,” Jehan muttered.
Alf passed him, mounting a low hill. From that vantage he could see all the ordered sprawl of the camp, seething within and without, arming itself for battle. Ten thousand men, swelled with the Latin allies whom the Greeks had driven out of Constantinople: they were a strong army in the reckoning of the West. Yet they faced the greatest city in the world.
He turned toward it. Burned and battered though he knew it to be, riddled with dissension and cowardice, it stood firm around the curve of the Horn, held up with the pride of a thousand years of empire.
“She is old,” he said. “She wavers and begins to fall. But no power of the West will long prevail against her.”
“You’ve fallen in love.”
“I’ve fallen into prophecy.” Alf shook himself. “This was the wrong place to come to escape from it.”
“How did you come here?”
“Witchery, of course,” Alf replied.
Jehan nodded, unperturbed. “I thought so. That’s what’s different about you. You’re freer with it. Freer all over. Almost like... well... Thea.”
“She’s labored long and hard over me.” Alf kept his eyes on the City. “The end was a battle royal. She tried to make a man; the monk fought to remain as he was. She won.”
There was a small pause, a bare concession to Jehan’s priestly vows. The young knight broke through with a whoop. “Eia! I’ve won my wager.”
As Alf stared, Jehan laughed aloud. “I knew you’d come to it sooner or later. Henry swore you never would; you’re too saintly. That shows how well Henry knows you. He never heard you when you were still a pious monk, coming out with ‘Lovely Flora’ in place of an Ave Maria. And he’s never had a proper look at Thea. How ever did you manage to resist her for as long as you did?”
“Ironclad idiocy,” Alf answered. “You’re a wretched excuse for a priest. Not only condoning sorcery but aiding and abetting it, and now rejoicing in a confession of open and thoroughly shameless fornication. “
“Why not? I’ve just won Henry’s best sword. And you look as close to happy as I’ve ever seen you. Unwanted wealth, forebodings of doom, and all.”
“Everything has its price.”
“Are you asking me for absolution?” Jehan asked, suddenly grave.
“No,” Alf said. “If you gave it I’d refuse it. The Church frowns on everything I am and do.”
“Not everything, and not all of us. Maybe I’m lapsing into heresy, but I don’t think there’s any sin in you.”
“Thea would laugh. A theologian, she declares, can reason his way out of anything.”
“That’s the beauty of our art. How else can the Pope both deplore this war and make the best of it?”
“The same way a renegade Latin monk can throw
in his lot with a family of schismatic Greeks.” Alf drew Jehan into a brief embrace. “Our paths won’t cross again until the war is over. Promise me something, Jehan.”
“If I can,” Jehan said warily, fighting down an urge to clutch at him and never let him go.
“You can,” said Alf. “Whatever happens, victory or defeat, promise me this, that you’ll do all you may to protect the women and children. I know in my bones that it’s going to go ill for them. Very, very ill.”
“I promise.” Jehan caught Alf’s hand. Once he had it, he could not say what he had meant to say. Only, “God be with you.”
“And you,” Alf responded.
And he was gone. Vanished like a flame in a sudden wind, and in Jehan’s hand only empty air.
26.
Alf knew well how Jehan had felt when he refused to take sanctuary outside of the City. For the thousandth time and with patience outwardly undiminished, he said, “Master Dionysios has done all that he may to make Saint Basil’s secure. He’s repaired the walls and strengthened the gates and hired guards to watch over them all. He’s dismissed most of the students, and those doctors and servants who’ve asked for it; he’s sent away the malingerers and the walking wounded. All of us who remain can take refuge in the hospital, with such of our kin as wish to go.”
Sophia nodded. “I know that. I understand it. I give you leave to go, and to take the children with you.”
“But you won’t come.”
She shook her head. Grief had not changed or weakened her; the certainty of war had roused in her no senseless panic. Yet something had gone out of her. Joy; the deep delight in life that had lain beneath all she did or thought or felt. “This is my house,” she said. “I won’t be driven out of it by anyone. Not even you.”
Alf sighed. “Very well. I stay here. I can’t protect two places at once.”
“No! Her tone was almost angry. “I want the children safe and under guard in Saint Basil’s, and I want you with them.”
“They’ve lost a father. Will you deprive them of their mother?”
“I intend to come out of this with my life and my fortune intact. My family I entrust to you. If harm comes to any of them, I’ll see that you pay a due and proper price.”
“No one will touch them while I live. But, Sophia—”
“I’m content.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll speak with Anna and Irene. Nikki I’ll leave to you.”
As she passed Alf, he held out a hand. “Sophia,” he said, not quite pleading.
She chose not to understand him. “Yes, you’ll be wanting a servant. Corinna, I think. She’s as strong as most men, if it should come to a fight, and she’s loyal to a fault.”
Alf opened his mouth and closed it again. Sophia smiled a small smile with no mirth in it, and left him standing alone.
o0o
Jehan shifted, searching in vain for a comfortable resting place. Men snored on either side of him, one with an elbow wedged in the small of his back; he winced and eased away from it. Water hissed and slapped against the ship’s hull; below, in the hold, the horses stirred, uneasy in their nightlong confinement.
Cautiously Jehan rose. The deck seemed sheathed in metal, shimmering in starlight: rank on rank of armored men, each clad in mail with his head pillowed on his helm. Jehan picked his way through them, rousing grunts and drowsy curses, to lean on the rail. Shields hung there for ornament and protection. A fine brave sight they would be, come morning, each with its vivid blazon.
He ran his hand along the rim of his own. Its blood-red lion glared at the City in defiance of the sigil it bore, the banner of the Prince of Peace.
All hope of peace had died long since. The fleet lay off the farther shore of the Horn, heavily laden with men and horses, grotesque with the shadows of the towers built wall-high on their decks, awaiting the dawn and the assault upon the City.
Soon now. It was black dark, but the air tasted of morning. Far in the east over the forsaken camp, Jehan thought he could discern a faint glimmer.
Among the ships, men had begun to stir, a low muttering that grew slowly louder, mingled with the chink and clash of metal, the thudding of feet on the decks, and the neighing of the horses in the holds.
The glimmer in the east swelled to a glow that conquered all the horizon. One by one the stars faded.
“Can’t you sleep, either?”
Jehan glanced at Henry. His face was a pale blur in the dawn light. “I never sleep before a fight.”
“Praying?” asked Henry.
Jehan laughed shortly. “I save that for afterward. Especially when I’m not at all sure which side God is on.”
“Then why do you fight?”
“Why not?” Jehan flexed his shoulders within his mail, and stretched. “His Eminence would be happier if I didn’t. But I don’t want to sulk in my tent like some shavepate Achilles when my friends are out risking their necks. Besides, I swore an oath. I gave my word when I took the cross, that I’d follow wherever the Crusade and the Doge of Saint Mark led. Should I be forsworn?”
“You have higher vows.”
“The Pope himself set me free to follow my conscience. I would in any case, he said; the least he could do was make it legal.”
It was light enough now for Jehan to see Henry’s smile. “You were wasted on the Church, I think.”
‘“No,” Jehan said. “When this is over, if God spares me, I’m going back to being a monk again. Cloisters, hourly Offices, all the study I could wish for... I’ll be dreaming of it out there when the fighting gets hot.”
“You make it sound almost pleasant.”
Jehan laughed truly this time, and freely. “Of course it is, the morning before a battle when I’m too shaky to sleep.”
Henry grinned and filled his lungs with the morning air. “Fight beside me today, brother.”
“Would I be anywhere else?” Jehan turned side by side with him and went to gird himself for the battle.
o0o
Well before dawn, the soldiers of the empire had ranged themselves along the walls that faced the Golden Horn. The farther shore was a shadow only, a presence in the night, but a presence grown deadly.
Morning crawled over Asia. Slowly the shadow ships took shape, and after a long while, color. Every ship bore on its sides the shields of its men; from every masthead flew a banner or a pennon. The new sun struck fire on their blazons.
“They’re moving,” muttered a voice among the Varangians.
Slowly, weighing anchor, raising sail, striving with oars against the current of the Horn.
A young Guardsman glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were bronze-gold; two minds gazed out of them, Alf’s enfolded in Thea’s. Within the walls across the half-cleared ruins of the fire rose the Hill of Christ the All-seer. A monastery crowned its summit; on the hill before the gates spread the vermilion tents of the Emperor.
Silver flashed beneath the imperial banner. Trumpets rang; timbrels sent their clamor up to heaven. The Emperor’s cry went up, a deep roar: “Christ conquers!”
And from the ships thundered the reply: “Holy Sepulcher!”
The air thickened with stones and arrows. Near Thea, a man bellowed in pain; his fellow nocked arrow to string and let fly. She swept up a heavy stone and hurled it with all her inhuman strength, well-nigh as far and as true as a catapult; another followed it, and another, and another. On the ships, shields bent and shattered; men toppled to the decks.
But the fleet advanced, all the power of the West gathered together, half a league from end to end. The first prow ground to a halt on the shingle. Armed figures swarmed from it.
Ladders swung up against the wall. A galley ran aground full in front of Thea. From the tower on its broad deck a bridge unfolded, crashing down over the parapet, bending under the weight of a dozen men.
On either side of Thea, Varangians gripped their axes. With a roar they sprang forward. Half hewed flesh and steel; half struck at the bridge, battling the Franks who woul
d have bound it to the wall.
Thea turned her axe against the bridge. As she smote, she laughed. “The wind fights with us!” she cried. “Ho! There it blows!”
Southward, driving against the ships, thrusting them back. Of them all, but five had reached the walls; and those wavered, losing their precarious grip.
A sword glittered before her eyes. She parried it with a vicious, curving blow that whirled the swordsman about. He staggered on the bridge and fell.
Thea’s axe crashed down where he had been. The bridge rocked. Two more axes struck it; three; half a dozen. With a groan of parting timbers it collapsed.
For an instant no one moved. One Latin only had set foot on the tower. He lay dead, sprawled over the parapet.
With a swift contemptuous gesture a Guardsman thrust him off. His body plunged to earth in the midst of a company of his fellows, a missile more deadly than any stone.
The Guardsman turned back to the rest, a feral grin on his face. “That for the cursed Normans,” he said.
o0o
“But he was a Fleming.”
“Eh?”
Alf stared blankly up at Thomas’ round puzzled face. He looked down. His body seemed thin and frail after Thea’s robust Varangian-shape. It lay on a pallet in a small bare room, the air sharp-scented with herbs, the air of Saint Basil’s. Nikki slept beside him, Anna and Irene guarded by Corinna across the small space. From the angle of the sun, it was full morning.
He rose, careful not to wake Nikki, smoothing his rumpled tunic.
Thomas managed a creditable smile. “Isn’t that like a child? Up all night, determined not to miss an instant of the adventure; and sound asleep by sunup.”
Alf followed him out and eased the door shut. “It’s an adventure,” he conceded, “but it frightens them, too.”
“Of course it does. That’s half the pleasure.” Thomas looked hard at him. “Were you having a nightmare when I came in?”