‘Good fruit. Better than the rotten fruit of our situation, eh, Vallbona?’
They reached the courtyard outside their apartments, which was quieter than usual. The nearest guards and Warings were up on the wall tops, and the place was quiet without dashing servants. Crossing to the doorway and the stairs, Ramon frowned.
‘What?’
‘Where are the Warings? Since Doukas’s new order, they’re always out here waiting for us. Hadn’t occurred to me.’
Arnau joined the frowning and ducked instinctively at a dull twang and thud. He was immensely lucky that Ramon was apparently more alert then he, for the missile had been aimed at his back, and ducking would do little to save him. Fortunately, Ramon pulled him sideways at the same time, and the crossbow bolt clunked against the stone wall a foot from the younger knight.
They spun in time to see a figure disappearing into a dark doorway. Arnau, hand going to sword, started to run and Ramon, in a fluid move, hefted the pomegranate and hurled it at the figure. His aim was true and there was a muted yelp from the shadowy doorway, but the figure was gone and the broken fruit rolled back out into the sunshine.
Arnau reached the door and ducked inside, but stopped there. He could hear distant footsteps padding up stairs. Their assailant would be long gone in the palace complex before he caught up. The figure had been in colours seen only briefly and in shadow, but indicative of any ordinary palace servant. All he had to do was drop his weapon and disappear among the other staff and they would never identify him.
Disgruntled, he crossed the square once more and joined Ramon in the doorway.
‘What was that about, do you think?’
‘Take your pick,’ Ramon answered. ‘Angry Byzantine trying to remove a Western knight from the equation, angry Frank recognising one of the Templars who fought on the walls? Maybe even just someone who hates the Order. We’re not universally loved.’ A thought seemed to strike him. ‘You don’t suppose the Baron de Castellvell or his cronies are on the Crusade?’
Arnau shook his head. ‘Castellvell has his work cut out with the Almohads. But you don’t think that Bochard…?’
Ramon turned a sharp look on him. ‘No matter how much we might disagree, this is not the work of the preceptor. Never suggest such a thing, Vallbona. A suspicion like that is beneath you.’
With that he turned and stomped on up the stairs.
But it didn’t feel beneath him. As they strode on back to their rooms, watching every shadow for another would-be assassin, Arnau found himself wondering about Bochard. The man had massacred the citizens of Cyprus. Had he killed to get that silver casket with the bloodstains? How far might a man like that be willing to go to accomplish his mission?
He shivered despite the heat.
Chapter 13: The Victorious Franks
August 18th 1203
Was it a good thing or a bad one that the Franks had withdrawn from their encampment outside the walls and returned to Galata and their original place of repose? Arnau couldn’t decide. Ostensibly it represented a good thing for the people. Not having siege machines aimed at their walls and the countryside outside ravaged and foraged by an occupying force was clearly beneficial. But that force remained a strong threat sitting just across the Golden Horn alongside their Venetian allies. There was speculation in the city that when the emperor returned from his tour with the Frankish leaders, the Venetians would be paid and the army and fleet would move on, returning to their Crusade.
Neither Arnau nor Ramon were remotely convinced.
The more hopeful and naïve of the people believed that their life would more or less return to normal when that happened. That they would be able to pay lip service to the Pope and privately go on with their heretical Eastern devotions. That they would return to being an empire with their own government, without Western interference.
Not at all convinced.
Ramon and Arnau descended the stairs from the sea walls close to their favoured Pisan church in good time for the service, wearing their full regalia with the red cross, earning reserved and careful looks from the Byzantine soldiers around them. Never had Arnau been more grateful for the bulky Waring guardsmen that accompanied them. They wore their white mantles at all times now, displaying the proud red cross of the Order which labelled them ‘Crusaders’ among the majority of the imperial citizenry. Ramon had approached Bochard carefully and requested permission to spend their days in the city in simple drab tunics, or at least plain white, the red cross being so negatively associated with the Franks in the city’s eyes. Bochard had flatly refused. In his view it was unnecessary, and the Order’s symbols, he said, would prevent them becoming a target for any angered Crusader. Thus they had left the palace via the city walls, using them to cross half the city to the Pisan enclave without ever descending into the disgruntled city itself.
Father Bartolomeo would have everything ready for the service, and the two knights prepared themselves as they passed through the few short streets from the walls to the church, shrouding themselves in fresh cloaks of serenity. It did not do to bring the troubles of the mundane into the house of God, after all. Arnau walked quietly, wondering how much longer they would remain in this boiling pot of anger.
Such was his internal focus that he failed entirely to note the noise until Ramon suddenly halted, hand going to Arnau’s shoulder to stop him.
‘Listen.’
The younger man did so. It took him a moment. There was the ever-present symphony of the seashore – lapping waves, creaking timbers, splashes and the endless coarse cries of gulls. And closer there were the sounds of soldiers atop the walls. There was the hum and susurration of city life all around them. But no, there wasn’t. That latter was gone, replaced by something entirely different. The sound of violence.
Arnau blinked and turned his head, cocking his ear. It came from directly ahead, from the direction of the Pisan church. ‘Trouble.’
Ramon nodded and both men drew their blades. Along with the stricture to wear their cross in public, they had made the decision to be armed at any time they left the apartment. Shields hefted into place, swords brandished, the two men hurried around the corner and along the next street. Arnau was acutely aware that even with the Warings, there were only six of them. He was glad that Sebastian had remained in the palace, making himself unpopular with Bochard by shying away from Latin services being held in Constantinople’s churches, though in a tiny, selfish way, he missed the extra sword.
Two more corners and narrow streets, and each one brought with it more audible clarity of what was happening. The sounds were not that of a clash of arms between soldiers, but of large-scale angry violence that was wholly one-sided. In the city? Franks marauding once again?
They rounded the final corner to see the small church at the junction of streets, and the sight that greeted them was appalling. At first glance it seemed to be a sizeable portion of the city’s native population attacking the Pisan settlers. From three streets citizens poured, wielding makeshift clubs and kitchen knives and whatever weapon came easily to hand. Clearly numerous Pisans had already fallen to the onslaught, judging by the distribution of crumpled shapes on the ground amid the chaos, and others were fleeing through the street towards the church, yet more disappearing into their houses and barring shutters and doors.
It was a riot, plain and simple, and it did not escape Arnau’s notice that the whole thing was more or less a grand-scale copy of what had happened to him that day among the burned ruins of the city. He had been waiting for the city to explode, but he had expected it to be focused against the Franks and Venetians across the water, not against others within the walls. Yes, the Pisans were loyal to the Roman Church, but they had been residents of the city for decades. Their menfolk had rushed to the walls to lend their aid when the enemy had arrived, regardless of their faith. In fact, Arnau understood that entire units of Pisan, Genovese and Amalfitan soldiers numbered among the city’s defence force now. Had their shared faith with
the invaders been enough to turn the city against them?
Arnau fumed. The city was in enough danger without them tearing each other to pieces within view of the Franks.
‘Look,’ Ramon said. ‘The cause, I would wager.’
Arnau followed his gesture. Half a dozen Franks in bright surcoats and with shields bearing varied designs were among the beleaguered Pisans, pushing their way back, trying to get away from the Byzantine mob.
‘You think they finally broke the peace? Enough to turn the city on any non-Greek?’
Ramon shrugged. ‘It’s possible. Who knows? But it seems likely to me.’
‘What do we do?’ Arnau said, uncertainly, watching the violence moving through the street ahead of them.
‘Nothing.’
‘What?’
Ramon gave him an exasperated sigh and sheathed his sword. ‘We do nothing. There is no part in this for us.’
‘You jest, Brother.’
Ramon turned on him angrily. ‘What would you have us do, Vallbona? Should we attack the innocent Pisans and support the Byzantines? But they are not only innocent, they are God-fearing Christians and both our Rule and the direct order of the preceptor prohibit that course.’
‘No, but—’
‘Or should we attack the Byzantines? Those men and women we have been fighting alongside for months, seeing them as the righteous in all of this. Men and women who are now officially within the arms of the Church of Rome? Again, an act forbidden by both Bochard and the Order.’
‘No, there’s—’
‘The Franks? Men of God. I say it again, forbidden by all. And to get to them you would have to wade through Pisans and Byzantines. Vallbona, this is one fight we cannot afford to become part of.’
Arnau gestured helplessly, muttering ‘But…’ over and over. Ramon was right. He had no wish to fight Pisans or Byzantines, and he had been expressly forbidden from attacking the Franks. ‘But this is appalling. If it doesn’t stop…’
Ramon nodded. ‘It might be the trigger we’ve been anticipating. Come on, we have to get out of here.’
As they turned and fled back towards the walls, Arnau couldn’t escape the feeling that the Warings were every bit as glad to get out of the area as they. No one wanted to take sides between two groups of citizens. They reached the walls and climbed the steps, turning at the top to look back. The entire Pisan quarter was in an uproar now. The noise had risen to a din, the rioting spreading. Likely something similar was happening now in the Amalfitan and Genovese quarters, judging by where the noise was coming from. Arnau pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. Stupid. These foreign enclaves had fought alongside the Byzantines for the good of their city for months and now they were being attacked while the Franks and Venetians sat watching, smug, across the water.
Arnau turned and looked over the parapet at the water. The Neorion harbour sat only a few hundred paces away, busier now than at any time since the Templars had arrived, with everything from full galleys to small ferries and fishing boats moored there, taking Franks back and forth across the Horn. He switched his glance back to the city again. The violence was spreading and the citizens were either fleeing this way or being driven hence. At least there seemed to be no sign of smoke, but then the Byzantines, no matter how angry and aggrieved they might be, were far from stupid enough to set fire to their own city.
It was minutes only before the Italian peoples began to arrive at the gate in the sea walls, which remained resolutely shut these days unless opened by the soldiery. Arnau peered down at the first half-dozen citizens to arrive at the gate. The lead man, who held a long staff which gleamed wetly at one end, shouted something in his native language at the gate. Ignored, he tried again in Greek.
‘Open the gate. We are being massacred.’
There was some discussion among the Byzantine soldiers, and while more and more refugees appeared at the gate Arnau noted something wrong with that spokesman. His head was bloodied and messy. It was only as the man turned in Arnau’s direction in desperation that the young Templar realised in horror what it was. Someone had carved a Byzantine crucifix with its three cross pieces into the man’s forehead with a blade.
This was insane.
A decision was reached, and the gates thrown open.
Arnau watched with sinking spirits as the various Italian residents of the city fled through the gate in a constant flow, pouring onto any ship or boat they could find in the harbour and putting out into the water, fleeing for the dubious safety of the Franks and Venetians across the Golden Horn.
‘What have they done?’ Arnau said in hollow disbelief.
‘They have turned on their own. Those men will throw their support behind the Franks now.’
The two knights stood in bitter impotence on the wall top, joining in three murmured psalms, a muted hymn and the appropriate recitations and prayers for the service they were clearly going to miss as they watched the foreigners pouring out of the city, driven to the water by the brutal row and violence behind them.
‘Nevertheless, my soul be subject to God and my hope of deliverance in him, for he is my God, and my Saviour; mine helper, I shall not be shaken.’ Arnau wondered whether Ramon’s odd choice of the sixty-second Psalm had been as a plea for their own deliverance from this entire mess as much as for the fleeing Italians passing them by.
For two hours the pair stood and watched in quiet gloom as men fled the city until the rioters back in the streets, robbed of anyone to take out their anger upon, set to work looting and destroying. With a sigh of regret the knights watched the gates being closed once more and, in the company of their Waring escort, began the trek back around the walls to the palace.
When they returned to the apartments, it was with a sense of foreboding and unhappiness. Conflicting reports reached the palace throughout the rest of the day, and without Doukas being present, they had to actively press whoever they could find for information. The Laskaris brothers were nowhere to be found, and so the main source of news were the palace staff and those few Warings who deigned to speak to them beyond matters of direct duty.
Depending upon who Arnau listened to, there had been a number of causes of the riot. A few voices suggested that the people of Constantinople had simply had enough and had passed their breaking point, lashing out at the nearest perceived oppressor, those being the Italian enclaves in the city. Others suggested some grand conspiracy between the Pisans and the Venetians, and that their duplicity had led the citizens to finally rid themselves of a snake at their bosom. Yet more folk claimed that Franks had raped a nobleman’s wife and when confronted about it had gone on a rampage of mindless violence until the citizens rose against them. That they had taken refuge with the other non-Byzantines in the city in desperation and that the mob had been so incensed by then that they had failed to distinguish between guilty Franks and other Westerners. It sounded horribly possible to Arnau, as did the simple possibility that the natives had just had enough and erupted wildly.
Whatever the cause, while reports varied wildly in their numbers, the gist was the same. The foreign enclaves on the northern edge of the city near the water had emptied in a matter of hours. Every last Pisan, Genovese or Amalfitan had fled across the water to seek safety with the Crusaders. Those who had received sufficient warning managed to take their wealth and possessions with them. Many had not, fleeing with only the clothes on their back and losing everything in the process. In the aftermath, the rampaging Byzantines had left bodies strewn in the streets, had daubed their heretical cross over any Western markings, had torn down signs in Western tongues and destroyed them, painting proud ancient slogans in Greek in their place.
And then it had subsided.
It had not quite been the trigger Arnau had fretted over. He had seen it as the first phase of a general rising and a complete closure of the city against the Westerners. It seemed that something had failed to ignite that spark though. With the flight of the Italians, the mob dispersed unchal
lenged, melting back into the streets. All went quiet. Life went on.
To Arnau and Ramon, listening to the reports coming in at the palace, it represented another step closer to the Hell on earth of which the young Templar had spoken. The general mood of simmering discontent that had pervaded the city for so long now had taken a subtle but noticeable shift into violent anger – xenophobia, even.
They contemplated speaking to Bochard again that evening, but eventually decided against it. Little good would come, they thought, from provoking him further. Nothing would change for them. Nevertheless, Arnau hovered outside their common room for some time late that night with an unaccustomed second cup of wine, and he noted with sinking spirits the preceptor’s door creak open, emitting the sound of hushed conversation.
A man emerged, wearing a knight’s surcoat and with a very expensive sword buckled at his side. Three men-at-arms accompanied him, and as he emerged into the lighter area of the corridor, Arnau felt a lurch of recognition. The surcoat the man wore had the same red and white squares with the black fleur-de-lys that he had seen on the shield of one of the men guarding Bochard at the church days earlier. That Bochard was fully in league with at least one of the Frankish nobles was now impossible to deny. Arnau ground his teeth as the man walked past, and tried not to look too belligerent as the knight bowed his head in acknowledgement of the Templar in the corridor.
Behind him, the preceptor’s door shut tight once more, and Arnau stood seething for a moment. Then he hurried over to the nearest window and looked down in time to see the knight emerge from the doorway below with his soldiers. Another dozen men stood outside with the man’s horse – some men-at-arms and some archers. Clearly, given what had happened, this nobleman was not going to venture into the city without adequate protection.
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