by Judith Tarr
“No,” Alf said, “not precisely a nightmare. Why did you wake me? Is something wrong?”
“That depends on what you call wrong.” Thomas was as grave as he could ever be. “The Franks have attacked.”
“I know.”
“Know everything, don’t you?” Thomas shook his head. “You and the Almighty. And of course, Master Dionysios. He wants you up and working. Just because you have a bed here, I’m to tell you, doesn’t mean you’re ill.”
“Or privileged.” Alf shook back his tangled hair. “May I have a bath first?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.” Thomas grinned up at him. “Don’t take too long about it.”
o0o
From the walls, empty now of enemies, Thea could see the sweep of the battle. Most of the fleet had retreated out of catapult range, driven by the brisk south wind. The shore was thick still with Franks, most afoot, a few mounted on horses that slipped and shied upon the shingle. But she had marked the companies that struggled back to their grounded ships, straining to thrust them out into the open water.
More now as the sun sank. Those who fought on, fought against a solid wall of Greeks.
Up on his hill the Emperor sounded his trumpets. Below the wall, the Greeks gathered and charged. The army above them hurled a new volley into the sea, mingled with that horror of the East, the dragon-lasts of Greek fire.
And the Latins crumpled. Some few strove to hold fast; but their strength had broken. All at once and all as one they gave way. One ship and then another clawed away from the deadly shore.
The enemy had fled. The City had held against them.
“Victory! roared the Guard. They laughed and whooped and threw their axes up flashing in the sun. “Victory! Victory!”
o0o
Jehan stood in the stern of the last ship, leaning on his sword, paying no heed to the few missiles that fell spent about him. All along that lofty and impregnable wall, the ranks of Greeks had turned their backs and bared their buttocks to the fleet.
Beside him Henry laughed, a tired, bitter sound. “Now we know what they really think of us.”
“Didn’t we always know it?” Jehan wiped his blade on his cloak and sheathed it. “I can’t believe it’s ending this way. After all that’s been said and done and promised…”
“You put too much faith in soothsayers.”
Henry was jesting. Perhaps. Jehan pushed back his mail-coif and let the wind cool his burning brow. “So,” he said, “we lost. What now?”
“A council,” Henry answered him.
o0o
They held it on the northern shore of the Horn beyond the camp, in the empty shell of a church; their table was the broken altar.
Count Baudouin struck it with his fist. “Are we knights or women? We’ve lost a battle, true enough. We won the last one. Who’s to say we won’t win the third?”
One of the Frankish lords swept his hand in the direction of the City. “Against that? There are a hundred thousand Greeks inside those walls, and an empire full of them all around us. We lost a hundred men today; they lost none that we know of. How can we hope to face them?”
“How not?” Baudouin’s eyes flashed around the assembly. “It’s more than our hides we’re fighting for. It’s our honor. Are we going to let a herd of traitorous Greeks boast that they had the better of us?”
A young lord nodded eagerly. “They tricked us into setting up an emperor. Then they murdered him and told us all our treaties were worthless. Now they want to trample on our prowess in war. No man will ever be able to say that Thibaut de Langliers was bested by any coward of a Greek.”
The younger men murmured, assenting; their elders sat silent. Baudouin faced the latter. “My lords! Does honor mean nothing to you?”
“Not,” said a grim greybeard, “when it’s so obvious that God is punishing us for our sins. We’ve pursued this unholy war against Christians, under Christ’s cross; we’ll die for it in God’s wrath.”
From among the bishops and the abbots, a man in Benedictine black leaped to his feet. “Not so!” he cried in a voice honed and trained at the pulpit. “God tests us; God tries us to find us strong enough to fight His battle. Have not the Greeks rebelled against our Church? Have they not denied the Lord Pope and twisted the words of our Creed and turned the Mass into a celebration of pagan magnificence? God cries out against them. Woe, woe to my people, that have become even as the Infidel!”
Jehan, seated behind the Cardinal Legate, bit back the words that crowded to his lips. His Eminence sat like a graven image, making no move to suppress such idiocy. They were all in it now, priests and knights, disgustingly eager to set the seal of divine approval on their folly. A just war, a holy war, a Crusade—God willed it; they had only to obey.
It was a lie. But it gave them strength. Their cheeks lost the pallor of fear; their eyes glittered with newborn courage. Someone began to chant a hymn: “Vexilla Regis prodeunt’—-‘Forth advance the banners of Heaven’s King.’”
He would not sing it. He would not.
“Another attack!” a baron called out as the Amen died away. “We failed on the Golden Horn. Why not try the other side? The Bosporus, maybe, or the Sea of Marmora. All the Greek defenses face us here. We can take them from the other side and be in the City before anyone can stop us.”
The council had waked to life and to hope. The Doge cut into the excited babble with a quiet word. “No,” he said. “We cannot venture on the Bosporus. Well before we could mount an assault, wind and current together would sweep us away from the walls into the open sea.”
“That,” someone muttered, “might be all to the good, if only we can be away from here.”
Dandolo glowered in the direction of the dissenter. “Our loss today is a disappointment, but far from the disaster it appears to be. We need only to rest, restore ourselves and our ships, and prepare a new and stronger assault. Two days, my lords. Only two, and we can return in force to take the City.”
“Two days’ rest,” said Baudouin, “and a new plan of attack. Aye, my lords. I swore I’d hear Mass at Easter in Holy Wisdom; that, I swear anew by God and all His saints, I shall do.”
“So shall we all.” Thibaut de Langliers sprang up with a cry. “Deus lo volt! God wills it!”
They echoed him, all of them, even the grimly smiling Doge.
But Jehan set his lips together and said not a word.
27.
“It’s not a just war!”
The Cardinal Legate regarded his secretary with lifted brow. He was, perhaps, amused. He was certainly not afraid, although Jehan’s white fury would have given most men pause.
“Certainly,” he agreed, “it is far from just.”
Jehan struggled to master himself. “Out there,” he said in a voice that was almost steady, “priests are saying Mass. They’re preaching sermons. They’re telling the men that God is with them. The Greeks are traitors, oathbreakers, worse than Infidels.”
“I know. I can hear them.”
“And you sit here? You read your breviary, say a prayer, meditate on the Infinite? You’re the ambassador of the Holy See!”
“So I am.” Pietro di Capua brushed a speck of dust from his scarlet sleeve. He was always immaculate, this prince of the Church; his fine white hands had never known greater labor than the raising of the chalice in the Mass. But the eyes that he fixed on the other were clear and sharp. “I know my rank and my station.”
“Then use it!” cried Jehan, unabashed by the open rebuke.
“You know what His Holiness thinks of all this. He excommunicated the Doge and all his followers with full and formal ritual after they took Zara. But those madmen from Francia have called them back to the sacraments and told them they’re forgiven. Is the Pope’s will worth nothing at all?”
The Cardinal shook his head slightly. “Have you been preaching that gospel to the army?”
Jehan drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. “I’m outraged, but I’m not insane
. One of the bishops tried to get me to preach his lies, flattering me with foolishness about my famous way with words. I escaped before I said anything we’d all regret.”
“So,” His Eminence said. “As you have so bluntly reminded me, I am the vicar of the Vicar of Christ. Unfortunately I dwell in the midst of Gehenna. The army can escape this trap only by fighting; the priests are in like case. Should they preach what you would have them preach, and die for it, and drive the army in turn to its death?”
“I fight because I swore an oath, and because I can’t bear not to. That doesn’t mean I have to proclaim a lie from the very altar.” Jehan leaned across the Cardinal’s worktable. “My lord! Are you going to allow it?”
“I have no choice.”
Jehan spun on his heel and stood with his back to the Cardinal, fists clenched at his sides.
“The Pope has no choice,” His Eminence continued quietly. “The Church has a head, but that head is far away. The members are here, and strong, and accept no guidance. They will do what they will do, whether His Holiness wills it or no.”
“He could condemn them from every pulpit in Christendom.”
“Could he? Would you, Father Jehan?”
The title stiffened his shoulders and brought his head up. He swallowed hard. Slowly he turned to face the Cardinal. “My lord, I... forgive me. I presumed far too much.”
The other did not quite smile. He was a small man, dark and inclined to plumpness, but in that instant he made Jehan think of Alf. “My son, you are forgiven.” He made a quick sign of the cross over the bent head. “Go now. I need to meditate.” His eyes glinted. “Upon, of course, the Infinite.”
o0o
Jehan prowled the camp, restless and ill-tempered. It did his mood no good to see the men, knight and common soldier alike, laboring with new and firm purpose, preparing for the morrow. There were no idlers; the few who were not at work gathered around the priests, deeply and devoutly absorbed in prayer.
A commotion drew him toward the shore. Women’s voices, shrieks and sobs, and the occasional sharp cry of a child. Under the hard eyes of a troop of monks, all the whores and camp followers crowded aboard a waiting ship. The army would sail to battle with all stain of sin washed away, all temptation banished as far as wind and oar would carry it.
Great temptation, some of it, languishing against the guards, pleading to be left behind. Not one man yielded.
The last buxom harlot flounced onto the deck. Mariners sprang to draw up the plank; others weighed anchor. The ship slid slowly out into the Horn.
He watched it go, scowling so terribly that no one ventured to approach him. Women he could face. They only tempted his body, a hard battle but one he could win; for though he was young and his blood was hot, both his will and his vocation were strong. But there were worse temptations.
He had his sword with him; he had been meaning to try a round or two at the pells to work off his temper. Slowly he drew the bright blade. It was Henry’s best, the winnings of his wager, the edges honed to razor keenness, the steel polished until it shone like a mirror. It could cleave a hair or a body with ease, needing only a firm hand on the hilt. Chanteuse, he had named it, for it sang when he wielded it.
He swung it about his head, rousing its sweet deadly voice. But it would drink no blood this day. It flashed home to its scabbard and fell silent. He was on his knees, sword upright before him, fists clenched upon the guards.
The carbuncle on the pommel blazed at him like a great fiery eye. Alf’s eye set in a rim of silver, piercing him to the soul.
“I swore an oath,” he whispered. “I took the cross. I promised...”
To slaughter Christians? The voice was like Alf’s, remote and clear, and not quite human.
“Schismatics,” Jehan said. “Heretics. They deny the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and ignore the supremacy of the Chair of Peter, and—”
Quibbles, said the other.
Jehan’s jaw tensed; his mouth set in a thin line. He was closer to handsome when he was smiling, a lady had told him once. When he was angry he was frankly ugly.
Vain youth. The voice sounded both amused and impatient. Do you intend to join in this final spasm of the war? Swordplay in plenty, great deeds of daring, and a place in a song at the end of it.
“Aye,” muttered Jehan, “the Requiem aeternam. Not that I care. I like to fight. It’s simple, and it keeps me from thinking.”
Yes. One must never think. That one’s best-loved friend is there among the enemy; that all one’s conscience cries out against this murder of Christian by Christian; that—
“Enough!” Jehan’s ears rang with the power of his own cry. He bent his head on his fists. The sword’s hilt was cold against his brow. More softly he said, “I’ve fought till now. I’ll see it through to the end. Whatever that end may be.”
Valhalla, most likely. You’ve earned it. All those battles against your soul’s protests: Zara, and the conquest of the City before Alf ever came there. You’ve fought well and valiantly and gained the admiration of even the staunchest priest-haters. There’s not a man in the army who can call you a shaveling coward or mock your long skirts. Ah yes; you’re a man among these mighty men, and well you’ve proved it.
Jehan bit his lip until he tasted blood. That was not Alf’s firm and gentle guidance. It was more like Thea, who could prick a man into madness with the barbs of her wit.
O bold brave Norman, earl’s son, knight of Anglia, the world will marvel that you challenged the power of Byzantium. And perhaps, by God’s will, won.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Warm though the sun was, he shivered convulsively; cold sweat trickled down his sides. Fight—he would fight, though it damned him. He was not afraid to die.
Truly he was not. No more than he was afraid of the women on the ship now far down the Golden Horn, riding the current into the open sea.
His trembling stilled. He opened his eyes. It came all at once, as they always said it did. Light; revelation. For a moment he was back in the West with a long anguished day behind him, driving himself to distraction with some complex question of logic or of philosophy, and then, without warning or transition, he knew. So clear and so simple; so beautifully obvious.
He rose slowly, cradling Chanteuse in his arms as if it had been a child or a woman. He was smiling. If his coy lady had seen him then, she would have conceded that indeed he was not ugly at all.
o0o
On this last Lord’s Day before Palm Sunday, the City kept festival. The enemy was driven back, the Emperor’s words echoing from Blachernae to Hagia Sophia and from the Golden Gate to the Golden Horn: “Never have you had so splendid an Emperor. All your enemies shall bow before me, and I shall see them hanged upon the walls they would have taken.”
As the day wore toward evening, Alf left his labors and went up to the roof. The air was soft, the garden coming into bloom; birds sang there, piercingly sweet above the manifold sounds of the City.
Nikki had followed him. After a little, Anna came to settle on his other side. He laid an arm about each and held them close. From his vantage he could see the imperial tents on their hill. Thea lay in one of them, stretched out at her ease, half asleep, half watching the dice game in front of the open flap.
That is no place for a woman, Alf said sternly.
She laughed and rolled onto her back. A man’s back and a man’s body, with no hint in it of the truth.
He shuddered inwardly, unable to help himself. Witchery he was learning to accept, even to take delight in. But this went against nature.
Thea stretched luxuriously. One day, my saintly love, you must try the shape of a woman. It would teach you a few valuable lessons.
Thank you, he said, but no. Do you insist on pursuing this devil’s work?
I’m defending the City. Rather well, I might add. We’ll drive the Latins off yet.
He drew a sharp breath. A sudden chill had struck him, like a cloud passing over the sun.
But the sky was clear. Thea, I command you. Come back to Saint Basil’s and put an end to this game of yours before it kills you.
Now you see why I won’t marry you. “Wives,” intones the great but misguided saint, “obey your husbands.” Though, she mused, I probably wouldn’t pay him any heed even if I were decently and lawfully wedded. I never met a man yet who had sense enough to command himself, let alone anyone else. Now a woman…
Eve, having been created in Paradise, can be regarded as infinitely more blessed than Adam who was shaped outside of it. Alf’s mind-voice softened although his will did not. Thea, for once will you listen to this poor lump of clay? It’s driving me mad to have you out there so far from me, so perilously close to death.
I can take care of myself, she snapped.
Then, he said, I’m coming to join you.
She sat up appalled. You are not!
I can fight. I have a gift for it. I only need gear and weapons. Surely you can arrange that?
No!
Well then, I’ll do it myself.
She struck him with a lash of power that staggered him where he sat.
He shook his head to clear it, and confronted her, determined as ever. I promise I won’t shame you, in battle or out if it.
You never have and you never will. It’s not shame I’m thinking of. It’s plain good sense. There are enough and to spare of fighters. We don’t need another, not even one whose skill is pure witchery. But true and talented healers are few and far between. You belong where you are. Stop your foolishness and stay there.
She had the right of it, as usual. But the shadow lingered. He cursed his power that granted no clear foreseeing when he needed it most.
You’re seeing the general slaughter, she said without the slightest sign of doubt. That’s all. And I don’t intend to be part of it. I’m too fond of this handsome hide to let anyone spoil it.
She would not yield. Nor could he force her, short of entering the camp and carrying her off bodily, a feat which he suspected was somewhat beyond him.
And, she added with a touch of smugness, being what I am, I can simply witch myself back again. Be gracious, Alf. Grant me the victory.