City of God

by City of God (retail) (epub)

  ‘They chose an emperor on the first day,’ Doukas said with a sigh. ‘Nikolas Kanobus. A likeable soul with a good heart. About as politically and militarily effective as a slap in the face with a wet cloth. Such a reign would be disastrous. Fortunately Kanobus, when presented with their decision, laughed until he coughed and refused the honour outright. He was the first of several to do so on that day, in fact. No one wants to grasp and drink from this particular poisoned chalice, of course. Now they still debate back and forth. The most sensible choice, of course, would be either of the Laskaris brothers, but there are enough fools in the council to block that decision. The failure of both brothers to break the enemy have made them just unpopular enough to be unacceptable to the council.’

  Arnau shook his head. ‘Both of them failed only because of their emperors.’

  ‘I know that, and you know that, and Lord but the brothers both know that. But you are thinking, and such an activity largely escapes the mindless drones of the council.’

  Doukas had then left to go about his work.

  Days passed in that strange, taut expectancy. The Crusaders and their naval allies made their last preparations for war, readying themselves to begin the final assault on Constantinople. The ineffectual and cloistered emperors remained in their palace, unseen by anyone and surrounded by a sea of Waring guardsmen. The nobles argued and debated in the great nave of the Haghia Sophia church which they had adopted for their meetings. Emperors were proclaimed and discarded in the same breath in those meetings, with no real change. The city seethed in a combination of anger and fright, fearing what was clearly coming almost as much as they desired it, to remove once and for all the threat of the invader.

  Throughout it all, Preceptor Bochard went about his business apparently entirely unconcerned, still stockpiling his relics. No longer were Franks or Venetians visiting the rooms, for their access to the city was more and more difficult and far from advisable. On the rare occasions Arnau caught a glimpse of the inside of Bochard’s room, he knew that the treasures gathered there were now so numerous they must soon be moved, lest they become too many for the space. He had a mental image of Balbi’s ship lying at anchor somewhere awaiting this haul, some of which would never reach Acre, instead filling a vault in Venice.

  And the rest of the Templars? Sebastian had long since ceased his cleaning and maintenance, and even Ramon had not spoken to him about it. The young man stalked the walls of the Blachernae, cursing and gripping his sword hilt, waiting for the opportunity to gut the enemies of Byzantium.

  Arnau and Ramon also walked the walls on occasion, and they prayed. They kept their steel sharp and their minds alert. They listened carefully to every nugget of news that came in, as any tiny piece of information might make the greatest of differences now.

  Thus it was on the cold and crisp afternoon of the twenty-fifth of January that they were standing at the window in the corridor, watching almost a thousand Warings at weapons drill in the gardens outside the emperors’ palace, when they saw Doukas and immediately knew that something was wrong.

  The finance minister burst through the gate that led into the Blachernae complex from the city proper, on the far side of the wide courtyard from their window. The Waring Redwald was at his shoulder as usual, though for the first time since Arnau had seen the big man, he had his axe unslung and gripped in his huge ham fist. Doukas’s face was tense and dark, and Redwald’s set in a deep frown of violence. The two men strode purposefully across the frosty white stone of the courtyard, but not towards the building that housed the Templars, angling instead east, down the slope towards the palace itself.

  Arnau and Ramon nodded their tacit agreement before they turned from the window and hurried off down the stairs. By the time they emerged into the courtyard, where crows circled in the bitterly cold air, Doukas was already striding away through the gardens close to the palace.

  Ahead, the Warings were busy shouting and grunting, clanging and banging, training with axes and swords and spears. Ramon glanced at Arnau and then started to run. Something was most definitely happening.

  ‘What is it?’ the older knight called ahead to Doukas as they closed on the pair, but the minister was preoccupied, his attention elsewhere. As Doukas and Redwald approached, the purposeful manner of their arrival rippled ahead through the Warings, drawing their training to a close. In moments, the ripples had reached the far side of the gardens and every axe and sword had lowered, silence echoing across the palace with every bit as much presence as the noise it supplanted.

  ‘To arms,’ bellowed Doukas. ‘To the walls, men of the Waring Guard. To the Blachernae gates. The blood of the people is up. A mob comes for the emperors’ blood!’

  Without further explanation, Doukas marched on through the crowd, Redwald still at his shoulder. Arnau was impressed how the sheer power and strength in the minister’s manner made the enormous guardsmen melt out of his way like the sea before the staff of Moses, parting and flowing back across the lawns.

  ‘To the walls,’ bellowed Redwald with a voice like the crashing of falling mountains. While Doukas’s announcement had stalled the Warings, to hear it repeated by one of their own with war on his face and his axe unslung seemed to galvanise them all.

  The Warings broke into a run, hurtling past Arnau and Ramon, who had to remain very still, like branches poking out of fast flood waters, until the tide of northerners had passed, heading for the gate into the city and the walls flanking it. By the time the two Templars were alone once more and able to move freely, Doukas and Redwald had reached the imperial palace and entered the main doors.

  ‘A mob?’ Ramon said in a tight voice.

  Arnau nodded and they broke into a run once more. It was hardly surprising, really. In fact, it was more surprising that this had not happened sooner. Two emperors who had failed their people holed up in a palace behind thousands of Warings, a council of nobles unable to agree even upon a potential usurper, and a vast array of enemies across the water waiting to destroy the city. After all, mobs had risen several times in the past few months. It was easily done. From Doukas’s manner, the angry crowds must be close, approaching the Blachernae. What was the minister doing? Planning to get the emperors out by the external gate? Surely he would not lend his aid in helping the emperors flee to the camp of the Franks?

  As they neared the imperial palace, more Warings began to flood from the main doors, and the two Templars kept to the left-hand side, managing to close on the doors as Warings erupted from the building like ants from a kicked nest, unsheathing swords and unslinging axes as they ran, shouting instructions to each other. Arnau hadn’t realised just how many of the Warings there were in the palace until he had to struggle past them. Someone had once told him there were six thousand in total, though rarely more than five thousand in the city, and it was unusual to find more than perhaps five hundred of them on duty in one palace. Yet they had seen probably two thousand already in the past few minutes.

  As they managed to push their way into the building and through the vestibule, they laid eyes once more on Doukas. He and Redwald were standing in a wide hallway at the base of an enormous staircase as the finance minister continued to issue commands like a general on a battlefield. Arnau was impressed, partially at the sheer presence and control Doukas was exhibiting, but more at how the Warings were obeying without question. He’d known Doukas to be clever and strong since the day they’d met, but this was the first time he’d seen the man truly take charge.

  ‘Should the Warings be following his orders?’ he said quietly. ‘I mean, he’s a finance minister.’

  Ramon shrugged. ‘He’s authority. The other ministers are probably all busy arguing over the succession.’

  They watched as Doukas hurried on now, up the stairs. Redwald here departed from his charge and instead beckoned to two of the Warings and disappeared through a doorway. Ramon, his face betraying worry and fascination in equal parts, looked back and forth between the two. ‘Up or down?
’

  Or both, Arnau thought silently, but discarded the idea. Something was definitely up, and they needed to stay together. ‘Up,’ he said, finally. Ramon nodded and they hurriedly climbed the stairs in the wake of Doukas, who had already reached the top and moved on.

  The two men were halfway up the stairs when another half-dozen Warings passed them on their way down, barely sparing a glance for the two Templars in the heart of the palace.

  By the time they reached the top, there was no sign of Doukas. The two knights stood on the wide landing above the staircase. Corridors led off, some into gloom where the walls were windowless, others bathed in the bright winter sunlight pouring through the glass. All doors were closed and there were no people to be seen. Arnau paused, concentrating. He felt, given Doukas’s urgency, that he ought to be able to hear the man, yet he could not do so over the ambient din of thousands of Waring soldiers making their way to guard positions around the Blachernae. His eyes searched the ground for footprints, for it had been frosty outside and there should be marks of the passage of feet. Futile. There had been so many Warings in the palace this morning that the marble floors were a mosaic of footprints anyway. Arnau had the suspicion that the emperors were living in squalor, unable even to trust their servants and staff enough to allow them into the palace. If the floors were not being kept clean, then how few servants were working?

  A muffled voice drew both men’s attention suddenly, and instinctively holding their sword hilts to stop the blades swinging and clonking, the two knights hurried off towards the noise, down one of the shadowed corridors.

  A sense of foreboding began to settle upon Arnau as they entered the dim passageway. Something was wrong. Very wrong. More murmured voices, and they both identified the door that was the source of the sound at the same time. As they closed on the rich, decorative door, they paused, looking at one another. Arnau shrugged and Ramon shook his head, backing away. Something had spooked the older knight suddenly, and he retreated behind a wide porphyry pillar a little further down the corridor. Arnau hurried after him and dropped back into the shadows, frowning a question at his friend.

  Ramon shook his head and pressed a finger to his lips.

  Arnau bit off his unspoken words and fell silent, lurking in the shadows. It made him feel extremely uncomfortable doing so, as such subterfuge had with Balthesar on Mayūrqa. It seemed unnatural for soldiers of God, knights and noblemen, rather than thieves and assassins and low types. Still, something had alerted Ramon, and the older knight certainly had good instincts. Arnau watched, his breath coming in faint, tiny gasps

  He had become so tense that he actually jumped a little when the door swung open once more. Ramon leaned back, swallowed by the shadows behind the wide, purple stone pillar. Arnau watched from the gloom as Doukas emerged, leading something. Arnau’s eyes focused, brow furrowed, as he peered at the shape. A person, hunched over, bent beneath the folds of a voluminous cloak.

  It had to be the emperor – one of them, at least. Where was Doukas going to take him? Where, other than with the Franks, could he possibly hope to be safe against a mob of his own people demanding his head?

  As the minister and his covered companion approached the top of the stairs Arnau leaned out of the shadows, his gaze following the activity. Doukas approached the staircase, making encouraging, supportive noises that echoed back along the corridor as little more than a murmur.

  Arnau stared in shock as the pair reached the top of the stairs and the minister suddenly jerked aside and shoved his companion roughly. The cloaked figure gave a terrified squawk, the cloak falling away as he slipped from the top step and fell.

  Arnau was moving before he’d decided it was a good idea. Ramon was at his heel, though the look on his face suggested he hadn’t planned to and had only reacted because Arnau had emerged.

  As he passed the door from which the men had emerged, he turned his head and glanced inside. He could see one other figure in there, sprawled out on the floor. In that brief moment he noted no sign of blood or fracas, just the figure of Isaac Angelos lying on the floor, one hand reaching out, imploring in death, his face a mask of pain and shock.

  Then Arnau was past the room, slowing as he approached the stairs, Ramon with him.

  Doukas turned to them, a strangely authoritative, challenging expression on his face. Arnau looked at him in disbelief, then down the stairs, where his shock increased.

  Alexios the Fourth had fallen the full length of the staircase, bouncing all the way down, acquiring bruises, fractures and broken bones from the marble. He had hit the bottom and lay there, bloodied and moaning. A circle of Warings stood around the man. Whatever oath they had taken, these few burly men showed no sign of leaping to the aid of the fallen emperor. Arnau felt slightly sick, even as Ramon stepped in front of him.

  ‘There is no mob, is there, Doukas?’

  Doukas nodded once down the stairs. At the bottom the Warings, led by Redwald, hauled Alexios Angelos off the marble floor roughly, stripping him of his rich garments. As the fallen emperor panicked and tried to fight them off with one arm, the other broken and hanging limp, the Warings exhibited no care, smacking and kicking him into submission.

  ‘Take him to the dungeons and make sure he is secured,’ Doukas commanded. ‘And while you are there, see to the release of the Laskaris brothers.’

  ‘No mob. No danger. Not from the city, anyway,’ Ramon said again, a note of accusation in his voice.

  Finally, Doukas turned a languid and calm face to the two knights.

  ‘Of course not. But the Warings needed diverting. You disapprove?’

  ‘This is usurpation. Whether for your own gain or to crown Theodoros Laskaris, it is still usurpation.’

  Doukas shrugged. ‘You Westerners and your odd definitions of honour. You cannot abide the idea of a coup, but have no qualms about insulting an emperor in his own palace during a diplomatic audience. Have you any idea how many emperors have ascended the throne over the body of a failed predecessor? More than had been born to it by far. It is a time-honoured and quite acceptable method of ascent, believe me.’

  ‘It isn’t right,’ muttered Ramon. ‘He was appointed by God, according to what I hear.’

  ‘And removed by the hand of man. De Juelle, use your head, not your heart. Isaac and his son were weak and dull-witted. At a time when Constantinopolis needed a giant, we bred rodents. Had this happened months ago, we might now be at peace, with the Franks gone.’

  Arnau frowned. It was true, of course. The method of succession might not be pleasant, but the motive could hardly be argued with. ‘He’s right, Ramon.’

  ‘Right?’ snapped the other knight, pointing down the stairs to where the naked former emperor was being dragged away, sobbing and leaving bloody smears on the floor.

  ‘One thing Balthesar tried to teach me on Mayūrqa was not to always judge other peoples by my own cultural rules. It doesn’t always work. Remember your Book of Kings, Ramon: “In the eight and thirtieth year of Azariah, the King of Judah, Zachariah son of Jeroboam, reigned upon Israel in Samaria six months. And that which he did was evil before the Lord, as his fathers had; he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that made Israel to do sin. Forsooth Shallum, the son of Jabesh, conspired against him in Samaria; and Shallum smote him before the people, and killed him, and reigned for him.”’

  Ramon grunted. ‘You liken Alexios to Zachariah the evildoer, and his father, the reprehensible Jeroboam, to blind Isaac? Then you make Doukas here your Shallum? And shall he now reign in Israel?’

  Doukas remained placid, his face emotionless. ‘A true Roman emperor is not made, knights of the Temple. He makes himself. Neither of those men had the mind or the strength to rule. The Angelids have been slowly ruining the empire for generations. And perhaps you forget that I have something of a history in this area. Four years ago, I saw the danger and the rot of the Angelids and I supported Komnenos the usurper. Had we succeeded then, we might not now be
facing extinction. No, I am unrepentant over the fate of that snake down there. I would have him strangled now were I sure I might not yet need him for something.’

  ‘But the council of nobles has the duty of selecting an emperor, yes?’

  Doukas sneered. ‘I gave them three days. Three days to pick one name. I even tried to steer them to the Laskaris brothers, but with three whole days of debate they are further from a decision than when they began. And while they do nothing, the Franks and the Venetians prepare to annihilate us. Someone has to take the rudder of state and steer us from disaster, and the more I watch fools and cowards fail around me, the more I am convinced that the man to do it is me.’

  Arnau was nodding. He’d not meant to show his blatant support, at least not without talking things through with Ramon, but Doukas was right. Apart from the Laskaris brothers, he could think of no one he had seen in his months in the city who had a better chance of success than Doukas.

  ‘You will free the Laskaris?’ he said.

  ‘I have given the order. The city will need their skills and minds and their leadership in the coming days.’

  Arnau turned to Ramon. ‘You have to admit that with this man on the throne and the Laskaris leading the army, at least Byzantium stands a chance.’

  Ramon remained still for a long time before finally giving a small nod.

  ‘The time for serious war is almost upon us, knights of the Temple,’ Doukas said darkly. ‘I do not wish to sound crude, but in this situation, the Warings have an expression: defecate, or leave the latrine.’

  Arnau gave a bitter smile. ‘Fight or flee, you mean?’

  ‘If you do not leave before the Franks come again, you may no longer have the option to do so. If you would like I can have your preceptor forcibly expelled from the city.’

  Arnau almost laughed at the notion, but Ramon shook his head, his face plastered with disapproval. ‘Bochard sees himself as saving the treasures of God from heathens. If you eject him, it will simply feed his hatred of Byzantium and make him all the more determined. If he is pushed from the city, he will join the Franks and you will find one more man on that hill willing to see the city fall. No, better to leave him. I will make one more entreaty.’