The Golden Horn
Page 25
“I—” Jehan struggled to speak normally. “I’ll try.”
Many people are worse than you, Nikki said comfortingly. And in a darker tone, If Alf tries to go away and leave me, I’ll follow him. I can do it. He’ll never even know I’m there.
“And I’ll help you.” Thea’s eyes flashed on Alf. This, it seemed, was an old argument. “You can’t go away and leave him as he is now. What would the humans do to him? He needs guidance and teaching from someone who understands him. Not from people who would call him witch and changeling and cast him out.”
“He needs his kin,” Alf said. “They both do. Wanderer that I am, without home or family, what kind of life can I give them?”
“You can stop wandering,” Anna said. “You’re an Akestas. You can take our money and build a house, and we can all live is in it together.”
“No.” Alf was on his feet. “Not in Baudouin’s domain. Not anywhere in this sun-haunted East. My pilgrimage is over. I want—I need—to go to my own people. It will be a long journey through lands you call barbarian; it will be hard, and it may be dangerous. How can I take either of you with me? You’re Greek; your faith is different, and your language, and all your way of living. And when you come to Rhiyana—if you come to Rhiyana—you’ll find yourself among people twice alien. Don’t you think you’ll be happier in Nicaea with your kin, among properly civilized people?”
“Civilized!” Anna snorted. “I’ve had enough of civilization. I want to see new places. Different places.”
“What would your mother say if she could hear you now?”
“She’d be coming with us,” Anna said.
Besides, Nikki said, you promised. You swore you’d always take care of us.
Alf’s breath hissed through his teeth. “You call it taking care of you? Dragging you off into the savage West, corrupting your pure souls with the heresies of Rome, turning you into rank barbarians?”
“You’re clean,” said Anna. “You speak Greek. I can learn to put up with the rest of it.”
“Wait till you see the inside of a Frankish castle,” Alf warned her. “And sleep in a Frankish bed. And contend with Frankish vermin.”
I’ll think them away, Nikki said serenely.
Thea laughed. “Acknowledge yourself conquered, little Brother! You’ve won yourself a family and a fortune; and neither of those, once gained, is at all easy to lose.”
Alf tried to glare at them all. But none of them was deceived.
Anna seized Nikki’s hands and whirled him in a mad dance, singing at the top of her lungs.
He sighed deeply. “God will judge me for this,” he said. A smile crept into the corner of his mouth. “Or else He already has.”
Jehan grinned at him. “To be sure, He has! Who knows what He’ll do with you next?” His grin faded; he ran the ends of his cincture through his fingers, suddenly tense. “Have you given any thought to how you’ll travel back to Rhiyana?”
“On foot, I suppose, as I came,” Alf said. “With a mule for the children.”
“And the wealth of House Akestas in your wallet?” Jehan leaned toward him. “Tomorrow morning a ship sails for Saint Mark with news of the victory. I’m to be on it as my lord Cardinal’s messenger to the Pope. Will you come with me?”
“On a ship?” Anna cried in rapture.
Alf opened his mouth. Jehan broke in quickly. “I’ve seen the ship. It’s splendid, its accommodations are princely, and the Doge has offered passage to all of you for a fraction of the usual price. You’d pay more for a good sumpter mule—provided you could find one, with the City as it is. And,” he added, having kept the most telling blow until the last, “Thea won’t be up to long walking for some while yet. Why linger here under Baudouin’s less than friendly eye, or tax her with too much traveling too soon? You can take your ease on shipboard, she can mend at her own pace—”
And we can have adventures! Nikki tugged peremptorily at Alf’s robe. Say you’ll do it. We all want to.
“We’re minded to go on our own, whether you will or no,” said Thea. “Well? Are you coming?”
Alf raised his hands in surrender. “Have I any choice?”
“None at all,” Jehan said laughing, half in amusement and half in sheer, youthful delight.
o0o
As often before, Alf stood in Master Dionysios’ study and faced the Master’s grim unwelcoming stare. His own was as fearless as it had ever been, with even a touch of a smile. “You asked for me?” he asked.
“Yes.” There was a box on the table beside Dionysios’ hand, small, plain, of red-brown wood carved on the lid with an intricate curving design. As he spoke, his finger traced the lines of it. “Sit down.”
Alf obeyed.
Dionysios’ finger continued along its path. His brows were knit; his lips were thin and set. After a time he said, “You’re abandoning us.”
“Tomorrow, sir. It’s much sooner than I’d thought or hoped. But—”
“But you let that outsize heretic talk you into it. He’s not thinking of you, boy. He’s thinking entirely of his own pleasure.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Dionysios’ eyes flashed up. “Sometimes I’m moved to curse the fate that made you a barbarian. Then I remember the time before you inflicted yourself on me. I had peace of mind then.”
“You’ll have it again when I’m gone.”
“No,” said Dionysios. His gaze held Alf’s and hardened. “If I asked you to tell me the truth, would you?”
Alf nodded slowly, but without hesitation.
“Don’t,” the Master said. “I had you while I had you. It cost me more than I’ll ever be able to recover.”
“Some of it I’ll give you back. If you wish.”
“I don’t wish!” snapped Dionysios. “I hired you to work in my hospital. My own well-being wasn’t part of the bargain. I don’t want to know what you did, or what you are, or what that needle-tongued witch of yours was or is or did.” Abruptly he thrust the box forward. “This is yours. Take it.”
Alf drew it toward him. It was heavy for its size. He opened it and drew a sharp breath. It was full of gold. “Master! I can’t—”
“Stop your nonsense. Every coin is yours. Your due and legal salary, with additions for work done above the normal requirements.”
With a fingertip Alf touched a coin. The wealth of the Akestas he kept in trust for the children. But this was his own. He had earned it.
It was only yellow metal. His payment was the passing of pain. Slowly he lowered the lid and fastened it. “I... thank you,” he said.
“Why? You worked for it.” Dionysios opened an account book and reached for a pen. “Take it and go. Don’t bother to come back and say good-bye. You’ll get enough of weeping and wailing from Thomas and the rest of them. I won’t be troubled with it. Now go!”
Alf paused. He glared. Mutely Alf bowed and left him.
For a long while after, he sat unmoving, staring unseeing at the half-written page.
o0o
The ship’s name was Falcon; and she was as swift as her name, her hull painted the steel-blue of the peregrine her namesake, her prow adorned with a stooping falcon. Alf, remembering the bird that had pointed his way from Saint Ruan’s to Jerusalem, felt his heart uplifted by the omen.
The others had embarked already, Thea borne in a chair like a great lady, angry though it made her to be so helpless. He met her glare with a smile that spread to Anna. She looked splendid in a gown that had come to her as a parting gift from the Doge: “For a brave and noble lady,” the messenger had said who brought it, “so that she need not face the savage West as she faced the wicked Doge.”
She stood very straight under the weight of the honor and of the silk; but her eyes were shining and her body trembling with excitement. “Won’t you hurry?” she called to Alf. “It’s almost time!”
As he set his foot on the gangway, a sudden tumult brought him about. A troop of horsemen thundered to a halt at the end of
the pier, one already afoot and running. Alf left the gangway and advanced to meet him.
Henry of Flanders came panting to a stop. Somehow, even in his haste, he managed to preserve his dignity. “Master Alfred; God be thanked! I prayed I wouldn’t be too late.”
“For what, my lord?” Alf asked, although he knew.
“To say good-bye.” Henry’s eyes were bright with more than exertion. “I wish that you could have stayed.”
“To be your prophet?”
Henry shook his head impatiently. “We’ve gained ourselves an empire,” he said, “but we won’t find it easy to hold. We need strong men who also have their share of wisdom—men who can speak to the Greeks as to their own countrymen, but who can speak as well for us of the West. There all too few of them. And two are leaving on this ship.”
Alf glanced back at Jehan, who stood motionless on the deck, listening. “My lord, we would stay if we could. And yet—”
“And yet.” Henry smiled a hard-won smile. “I should know better than to ask for what l can’t have. But it’s more than your talents I’ll be missing, Master Alfred. Will you say good-bye to me as a friend?”
“Gladly,” Alf said, coming to his embrace.
He stepped back quickly. “Farewell, my friend, and a fair voyage.”
The captain bellowed from the bridge, cursing the laggard. Alf retreated to the gangway. There for an instant he paused. “Farewell, my lord Henry,” he said. He smiled his sudden smile. “It will be something to brag of in years to come, that I had the name and the love of a friend from the Emperor of the East.”
“But,” Henry said, “I’m not—”
“Yet,” Alf said in the instant before he turned and sprang lightly into the ship.
o0o
They stood at the rail, all of them, even Thea defiantly erect. Alf took his place beside her; Anna’s hand slipped into his right and Nikki’s into his left, gripping hard. Smoothly Falcon slid from her berth and came about, her bright sails swelling with the westward wind.
Slowly, then more swiftly, Henry’s figure dwindled behind them, and beyond and about him all the ruined splendors of Byzantium.
“There never was a greater city,” Alf said, “nor ever one so beautiful.”
“Even in her fall.” Jehan shook himself and turned his face toward Falcon’s prow. “Well, we’re done with her. God help her and everyone in her. I’m for the West and home, and glad I’ll be to get there.” He left the rail, staggering a little as he found his sea legs, holding out his hands to the children. “Who’ll go exploring with me?”
Alf watched them go, smiling slightly as Nikki, running, snatched at his cat. The beast eluded his hands and dove beneath a coil of rope. He wavered, torn, and sprang forward with sudden decision in pursuit of his sister and his friend. Alf’s smile widened almost into laughter.
Thea’s arms slipped about his waist. “Well, little Brother? Has it been worth it?”
“Every moment of it.”
“Even the pain?”
“Even that,” he said. “Out of it, and in spite of it, I’ve gained more joy than I ever dreamed of: wealth and kin and friends, and,” he added after a pause, “a lover.”
“Last in your reckoning, I see. But I hope not least.”
“No. Far from the least.” He took her face in his hands. “Will you marry me, Thea?”
She pondered that with every appearance of care. “Maybe,” she answered him at last. “Someday. If I’m properly persuaded. Meanwhile everyone is out and about, and we have a cabin fit for a prince, that’s cost us no more than an earl’s ransom. And in it...” Her gaze met his, bright and wicked.
He stared back, all innocence. “Yes, my lady?”
She tossed her bronze-gold braids and laughed. “Yes indeed, my lord!”
He swept her up and kissed her soundly, and bore her away.
Author’s Note
The world of The Golden Horn is not precisely the world we know. Yet in that world as in this one, between spring and spring, 1203-1204, a Western army advanced upon and eventually conquered the city of Constantinople. Our historians have named this conflict, with its confusion of aims and motives and its devastating outcome, the Fourth Crusade.
I have taken few liberties with the framework of my history or with its major characters. Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, may in fact have been a mere eighty years old at the time of the Crusade. He was certainly blind, and he was almost certainly the motivating force behind the diversion of the Crusade from Egypt and the Holy Land to Byzantium.
The rivalry between Count Baudouin (Baldwin) of` Flanders and Marquis Boniface of Montferrat simmered throughout the campaign, culminating some weeks after Easter, 1204, with the election of Baudouin as Latin Emperor of Byzantium. He was crowned in Hagia Sophia in May of that year. Boniface, for his part, married the great beauty, Margaret of` Hungary, widow of the mad Emperor Isaac; and amid much bitter quarreling with Baudouin, established the vassal kingdom of Thessalonica. Though considerably older than Baudouin, he outlived his rival by two years.
The climactic battles of The Golden Horn are based solidly on fact; Henry of Flanders did indeed take the banner of the empire and the icon of the City from the Emperor Mourtzouphlos in a skirmish. It was not he, however, who pierced the walls of the City in the final battle and threw open the gates, but Peter of Amiens, among whose party was an impoverished Picard knight, Robert de Clari—the author in later days of an account of the Crusade and of his own part in it. Robert’s brother, the warrior priest Aleaumes, was first to climb through the gap in the wall, despite Robert’s attempt to drag him back by the foot.
Once the Latin army had entered the City, the Greeks despaired, although the Emperor strode all but alone through the streets, striving to rouse them to battle. With his flight and the panic of his people, the enemy found themselves victorious.
There followed an orgy of destruction; three days of unrestrained pillage and rapine. Constantinople was stripped bare. Her unparalleled store of sacred relics was scattered throughout the West; her works of art, both pagan and Christian, shattered or stolen (the Greek historian and eyewitness, Nicetas Choniates, bewails the wanton destruction of, for example, the Helen of Phidias; the four great bronze horses of San Marco in Venice stood once in the Hippodrome in Constantinople); her vast riches scattered among the Latins, never to be restored.
The Latin Empire of the East endured a mere sixty years. The Emperor Baudouin, captured in battle against rebel Greeks and their Bulgar allies at Adrianople in April, 1205—a year only since his taking of the City—died a prisoner. Enrico Dandolo, who came to the rescue of Baudouin’s shattered army, died a month after, to be buried in Hagia Sophia. It was his great pride and his Republic’s boast that he had ruled a quarter and a half of the Roman Empire; such is the inscription on his portrait in the Doges’ Palace in Venice. Certainly, whatever evil he wrought against the Greeks, he insured the hegemony of his city in the East for many years thereafter.
Henry of Flanders succeeded his brother as Emperor; he was, asserts the historian Donald Queller, “by far the ablest of the Latin Emperors, moderate, humane, and conciliatory.” He died in 1216, still, at forty, a relatively young man, accepted not only by his own people but by the Greeks whom he had helped to conquer.
His successors could not equal his ability. At last, in 1261, Michael Palaeologus of Nicaea restored Greek dominion in Constantinople. He found the City in ruins and stripped of all its treasures. The empire he established would endure for two centuries until its final fall, in 1453, to the Ottoman Turks.
But the greatest glory had long since departed. Byzantium would never again be the great power she had been before the coming of the Latin fleet to the shores of the Golden Horn.
My novel owes its background to many sources. I am particularly indebted, however, to the firsthand accounts of Geoffroi de Villehardouin and Robert de Clari; to Sigfús Blöndal’s classic text, The Varangians of Byzantium, revised and translat
ed by B. Z. Benedikz; and to that excellent, scholarly, vivid and detailed historical study, Donald E. Queller’s The Fourth Crusade: The Conquest of Constantinople, 1201-1204.
Copyright & Credits
The Golden Horn
Volume II: The Hound and the Falcon
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Edition
June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61138-175-7
Copyright © 1985 Judith Tarr
www.bookviewcafe.com
First published: Bluejay Books, 1985
Cover design by Dave Smeds
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Book View Café Ebooks by Judith Tarr
Novels
Ars Magica
Alamut
The Dagger and the Cross
A Wind in Cairo
Lord of the Two Lands
The Hound and the Falcon
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
Nonfiction
Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right
BVC Anthologies
Beyond Grimm
Breaking Waves
Brewing Fine Fiction
Ways to Trash Your Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy II
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