Arnau and Ramon kept pace on the wall top, watching the imperial party returning. The emperor was garbed like some antiquated general. Doukas followed among several other courtiers, perhaps a dozen of the Frankish nobles alongside, all escorted by brightly coloured knights, dour men-at-arms and Byzantine soldiers. The citizens watched them all with simmering hate. No Frank was safe in the city these days, but no mob was going to attack such a large army, and probably the emperor was unaware of the danger in his own streets anyway.
They closed on the Blachernae’s gate, the imperial party proceeding along a wide thoroughfare and the Templars keeping a parallel course on the wall. Passing from the city ramparts into the palace’s enclosing curtain, Arnau and Ramon soon reached the gate top and watched the emperor and his cronies return to the palace. They would see Doukas as soon as they could, learn what he had to tell and inform him of all that had happened in his absence before the court could provide a sanitised version of events, shifting any blame.
Arnau glared at the party until Ramon nudged him and pointed across the wide courtyard. Arnau peered and saw Bochard emerge from the stairway to their apartments. At the preceptor’s shoulder was the Frank in the white and red surcoat and black fleur-de-lys design. Both had squires with them and several men-at-arms followed.
Quickly, at Ramon’s heel, Arnau descended the tower and emerged beside the gate. In the courtyard, the preceptor and his Frankish friend had met with two of the returning knights. Arnau felt something click in his mind as he saw that one of them bore the same white and red shield-in-shield design that he had seen outside the church all those weeks ago when someone had attempted to shoot them. The other was dressed impeccably in the latest Western fashions, forgoing armour, but his cote of dark green drew Arnau’s attention almost as much as the red-and-white coat of arms displayed on his horse’s caparison.
Two Western knights, a Venetian dog and Bochard.
Arnau looked round in surprise at a call of greeting to see Doukas walking in their direction, peeling gloves from his hands. His boots splashed in the shallow puddles left by the morning’s rain, and he came to a halt with a shiver. Redwald stood at his shoulder as always, treating the two Templars to a simple nod of recognition.
‘I am sure we all have much news,’ Doukas said in weary tones.
Arnau nodded vigorously, but Ramon waved it away with a hand. ‘Do you know who those men are?’ he asked, pointing at the knights who had been in the minister’s company on the journey but had now joined the preceptor. The young Templar looked back. The two knights in red and white moved with that haughty pride typical of the Frankish lords, but the man in dark green and with rich gold adornments was something else. Moving along behind them like a sour shadow, he felt wrong, suspicious. Arnau was moved, with a shudder, to even say evil. He did not so much walk as stalk, not so much stand as lurk. Arnau took an instant dislike to him. That man was trouble.
Doukas nodded, brow furrowing. ‘The white and red fellow with the big nose is called de Charney. He is a dangerous one, I think. He likes to hurt people and see them killed. The emperor pleased him greatly on our journey by hurting a great many people before fleecing them of coins.’
Ramon nodded, and turned to Arnau. ‘De Charney. Big Templar family. One of them, possibly his father or uncle, was a preceptor back in France. I met him once. De Charney and a man from Acre. Bochard has contacts within the Crusade.’
Doukas frowned at them. ‘The other is a Venetian by the name of Balbi. Almerico Balbi. I would not trust him as far as I could spit a wolf, though much the same could be said of all Venetians.’
Arnau nodded. A succinct appraisal that very much supported Arnau’s own. Balbi – the man who supplied Bochard’s ships, no doubt. And given the other two, probably with some connection to the Order. The preceptor was shrewd, clearly, using those with a vested interest in the Temple to acquire, gather and ship his haul. How far could he trust his Crusader allies and their Italian ship masters though, Arnau wondered.
‘The hinterland is officially secure,’ Doukas said wearily. ‘That is the official line. In truth rebellion lurks a few fathoms below the surface, and our little financial forays did more to drive disaffection into every heart than draw them back in. I would not be at all surprised if whole regions did not defect to the Bulgars in coming months. Not that the emperor will care now that he has his coin.’
‘You gathered enough to pay off the doge?’
Doukas gave a hollow laugh. ‘There is not enough gold in the empire to pay off the doge. All we have done is compound our problem and doom ourselves.’
‘Why?’ Arnau breathed.
‘The emperor has managed to gather sufficient coin to pay the Venetians for their services thus far. Nothing is now owed. But if the Franks wish to sail on to Egypt, then they will owe more. The Venetians will take them no further without coin, and the Franks do not have the funds. But between them they more or less control Constantinople and they cannot believe we are not hoarding more wealth away from them. This is far from over, my friends. All we have done is guarantee that the Franks and Venetians will stay for the winter.’
Arnau closed his eyes in dismay. ‘Can the Crusaders not simply cross the land from here on their way to Egypt?’
‘They would have to pass through areas with poor forage and dangerously close to the Sultanate of Rum with whom tenuous treaties exist. That way disaster lies. No, they need to go by ship. Which means the Venetians, which means raping the city of every last coin.’
Ramon sagged. ‘That will force a war. You’ve missed much, Doukas, but I tell you now that a single kick or slung insult these days could drive the entire city into open rebellion.’
Doukas sighed, looking up as it started to rain again.
‘Tell me everything.’
Chapter 15: The Line Drawn
December 11th 1203
‘Trouble,’ Ramon said, looking back through the apartment door from the corridor where he had been standing at the window like some lovelorn prisoner mooning over the world outside. But then in a very real sense, prisoners was exactly what they were.
Prisoners confined to the city by Bochard’s ongoing obsession with acquiring and shipping artefacts. Without the preceptor’s permission, they could not leave Constantinople unless they deliberately broke one of the most important rules of the Order: obedience. Ramon would not countenance such a thing without Bochard breaking the Rule first and giving them justification.
Prisoners within the Blachernae palace, too. The city had come to the boil, using Arnau’s now frequently voiced analogy. There were no longer punishments for citizens attacking Frankish visitors, not because of a change in the regime, but because there were no Frankish visitors. Since one unfortunate and foolish Burgundian man-at-arms had chanced the city in mid-November and had been sent back across the water in a small fishing boat, moaning, with his eyes put out and his hands and feet removed and sealed with hot pitch, no one else had felt inclined.
Now no Frank crossed the water, the entire crusading force sitting glowering at the city from Galata’s slopes, the Venetians on the waterside opposite the city’s strong white walls. Arnau could imagine how much the situation rankled among the Crusaders and their naval allies. In theory, the younger of the two emperors currently ruling the city was their creature, and therefore they more or less controlled Constantinople. Yet they dare not enter the city as free men, for to do so invited a gruesome demise. Moreover, they had no legitimate reason to complain. The emperors had punished men for what had repeatedly happened, for all the good it did, and the city had paid over the money demanded of it… thus far.
It irked Arnau – Ramon and Sebastian too, he was sure – that they had fought and shed blood against the Venetians for the sake of the city, yet because of the cross that Bochard insisted they continue to wear, they themselves could not enter the city without facing exactly the same peril as the Crusaders with whom they would be connected in the public eye. Even an
escort of four burly Warings no longer seemed adequate protection from the furious city, so they had now spent weeks trapped in the palace.
The only visitors these days – which consisted almost entirely of either priests insisting on Papish practices being followed by the city’s churches or the occasional visits by those few nobles dealing with the preceptor – came to the city heavily armoured with an entire conroi of knights and associated men-at-arms. They came around the Golden Horn by the higher bridges and approached the city by land, entering through the Blachernae Gate, straight into the palace without braving the perilous streets of the city itself.
The situation was deteriorating daily and Ramon was convinced that open warfare was just days away once more. Their window of opportunity for leaving the city had almost closed, yet still Bochard refused.
The only visitor Ramon and Arnau regularly saw was Doukas. Even the Laskaris brothers had begun to keep themselves to themselves, staying out of the court’s circles, safely anonymous. Doukas was permanently busy, trying to stretch the tiny funds of the city to pay all that needed paying, but when the strain became too much, he would visit the Templars, acquaint them with the latest news and sag in a chair with a cup of wine, retreating from his fiscal nightmares for a short while.
Arnau joined Ramon at the window in the corridor and peered down, his spirits sinking at the sight of red-and-white clad men below, side by side with dark-green Venetians.
‘Wonderful.’
The two men stepped back into their doorway. Blocking the corridor to the preceptor’s room would be unlikely to improve anything. Footsteps echoed up the stairs, and after a few moments, figures emerged from the darkened stairwell. The Lord de Charney stepped out onto the flagstones, flinging the two Templars a look filled with a haughty superiority not often displayed before the Order’s knights. The two men returned his look with stony glares of their own. Then Almerico Balbi appeared. Once more, Arnau’s neck hairs rose, and he shivered. The Venetian’s face was the precise opposite of de Charney’s. He radiated good-natured interest. At first glance, it would be tempting to step over and shake his hand. But Arnau knew the man better than that now.
Some men put forth an aura that seduced the eye and the heart, distracting them from the truth of things. Balbi was such a man. The very moment Arnau forced himself not to see that warm exterior, he noticed the cold flat look in those eyes. Balbi assessed the value of everything. In the man’s eyes, Arnau could see his own worthlessness reflected. Balbi considered him nothing, yet that warm smile kept people unaware of his reasoning.
Balbi bowed his head respectfully, and without even intending to, Arnau found himself responding in like manner. Lord, but the man was charismatic. They stood in silence as de Charney rapped on the preceptor’s door, which was opened to reveal Bochard already prepared for the outdoors. Leaving his room in Hugues’s care, Bochard stepped out, following the two foreigners back down the stairs. The master treated them to a look no warmer than de Charney’s, and was gone. The two knights watched from the window as the small party moved off across the Blachernae complex and out of sight.
‘De Charney displays all the warmth of a snake,’ Ramon said with a curl of the lip.
‘De Charney is nothing compared to his friend.’
Ramon nodded. ‘Did you get a good look at him?’
‘Better than he’d like, I think. The man has the Devil in him.’
‘He seemed perfectly angelic on the surface,’ the older knight said quietly.
‘So did Lucifer. That one is a dark heart hidden behind a golden smile. If Dandolo is half what Balbi is then it is no wonder the Franks betray everything they believe in at his mere whim.’
The two men returned to the room, peering at the half-polished armour sitting on the table. Had things been normal and they in their full monastic routine, Ramon would have reprimanded Sebastian for leaving a job half done. As it was, the young squire was off somewhere on his own business, as was increasingly the case these days, and both knights felt inclined to give him space. He was struggling so much more than either of them, after all. Thus it was that the two knights were alone when the impeccably dressed eunuch reached the top of the stairs, his Waring escort and three attendants at his heels.
‘Good morning,’ the man said politely, inclining his head, standing in the light of the window at which Ramon had recently stood.
‘Good day,’ the knights replied, bowing curtly.
‘I bear a message for your master.’
Ramon and Arnau exchanged glances before the latter straightened. ‘I am afraid Preceptor Bochard is absent. I am not sure when we are to expect him. Can we be of assistance?’
The man’s face dropped into a crease of uncertainty. ‘It is a matter of some urgency. Where might I find the commander?’
‘I truly have no idea, I am afraid,’ Ramon replied.
Again the man seemed worried and doubtful. ‘The emperor has summoned the representatives of the Order in confidence. The summons is, as I say, a matter of some urgency.’
‘Then we will join you. Vallbona here and myself are full brothers of the Temple and quite capable of representing the Order’s interests.’
Still the man hesitated, peering intently past them at the far door as though Bochard might suddenly materialise if he concentrated hard enough. Finally, he nodded slightly. ‘Very well, if you would follow me.’
Ramon again looked across at his younger companion. An imperial summons sounded important, and the words ‘in confidence’ were intriguing. Arnau shivered in anticipation. They had spent time in the company of several courtiers, some of them repeatedly, but they had personally experienced an imperial audience only with the former emperor who had fled in the night. Their entire involvement with the current emperors had been limited to watching the younger Alexios being paraded by his Frankish masters. They had yet to even set eyes upon the ageing Isaac, whose blindness and frailty had made him something of a recluse, hiding away in the palace, according to rumour.
Which emperor, Arnau wondered? Who had issued a confidential summons to the Templars?
The functionary led them from their accommodation across the courtyard outside, through a garden with high hedges and into another part of the huge palace complex – a part into which they had not yet ventured. Their meetings with the emperor and his court had always been in the Great Palace on the far side of the city or in their own rooms. This place would be the palace proper where the emperors now held court, for it was only at the Blachernae where the Crusaders could visit without passing through the city itself.
Arnau marvelled anew at the ancient marble grandeur of the place. Statues from antiquity of emperors long dead lined a vestibule with a floor of multichrome marble. They clumped, clicked and rattled their way along it, Warings behind them, functionary in front. Entering a wide room, they were delivered into the hands of a different eunuch in even more sumptuous silks, who bowed.
‘Good morning, sirs. If you would follow me.’
The man turned sharply and strode off through another door, alone. Ramon and Arnau shared unspoken thoughts, shrugged and followed. It was only as they entered the new corridor that Arnau realised they were now alone with the man, the attendants and guards left behind. Their intrigue grew as they were led up a staircase, through a door that required unlocking and along a narrow corridor into a small room. The room was little more than ten paces long and six wide, with seats but no table. The only light was provided by a single oil lamp standing on a narrow shelf. There appeared to be three arched windows in a columned arcade, each covered by a thick red curtain.
The knights turned frowns upon the man, who smiled oddly. ‘If you would kindly wait here until you are sent for?’
With that, he withdrew and closed the door. Arnau felt a tiny thrill of alarm at the sound of the door being locked. For whose security, he wondered.
‘Well, what do we make of this?’ Ramon muttered quietly.
‘All very cla
ndestine,’ Arnau agreed. ‘A strangely obscure antechamber or waiting room, wouldn’t you say?’
A nod. ‘Where are we, I wonder?’ Ramon murmured and crossed to the window, edging aside one of the curtains and peeking through. Arnau heard him take a sharp breath, and he let the curtain drop, turning with wide eyes.
‘What?’
Ramon gestured to the windows, and Arnau repeated the procedure, lifting one edge slightly and peering through.
He stared in surprise.
What he had assumed to be draped windows did not look out onto wide gardens or courtyards, but down into a wide and well-appointed chamber. A throne room, it appeared, or perhaps an audience chamber. The large room was decorated with purple drapery, and on a raised dais at one end were two great thrones. Arnau peered at the figures of the two emperors in fascination. He had seen Alexios before, and was surprised to see the young man finally dressed as a Byzantine ruler and not some Frankish princeling. The man’s court dress was incredibly rich and complex, decorated on every inch of fabric, scattered with priceless jewels and plates of gold, from his crown decorated with pendulous chains and rubies to his red leather boots with gold adornments. The ageing Isaac the Second was garbed just as richly, his face cadaverous, empty white eyes staring out above a greying beard that had been trimmed down to a spade-like point. Arnau wondered how much of the Venetians’ debt could have been covered by the imperial costumes alone.
Behind the emperors’ dais stood a small crowd of servants and eunuchs, and richly dressed courtiers lined the two sides of the room, standing silently, the only two seats in the room those in which the emperors sat. The gathering was completed by numerous heavily armed and armoured Warings, bristling with pointed steel for the emperor’s protection. Arnau spotted Doukas among the courtiers, as well as the rarely seen Constantine Laskaris. Redwald and Octa were both present, standing like deadly sentinels.
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