by Neil Oliver
The air was filled then with a sound like thunder, and he was smothered and bent double, his head crushed on to his knees. His ears rang and his mouth was dry and he wanted to cry out, but the weight of the roof collapse had emptied his lungs as completely as a pair of leather bellows. He flexed his arms but they were pinned by his sides. He was immobile, fixed like a fossil in rock, and his lungs burned, screaming for an intake of breath. Before his eyes were bright flashes, whole starbursts, and the noise inside his head was deafening. Just as he felt he was letting go, slipping downwards into his own deeper darkness, he felt hands grasping at his ankles. He had a momentary flashback to the tunnel through the rock, and Lẽna reaching for him, and then he was moving, being dragged backwards. His legs were straightened beneath him, like an opening penknife, but he was helpless still, his mouth and nose filling with dirt as someone pulled him clear of the roof fall. Then he was beyond the collapse, and gasping and choking as someone he could not see rolled him on to his back. He sucked in air – hot and damp, but blessed nonetheless. He swallowed more soil and choked again and rolled up on to one side and coughed and vomited, emptying himself of strings of bitter bile and then sucking down more merciful draughts of air.
‘You’re all right,’ said a voice, familiar but stricken with concern. ‘You’re fine, you’re fine,’ the words babbled like a prayer.
He was carried then, arms around his shoulders and under his legs as he was passed, still in a sitting position, to the base of the first ladder. They would have fixed ropes and hauled him bodily up the shaft to the surface, but he brushed them away and found the rungs for himself and slowly made his way upwards into the night.
He reached the top and was pulled clear of the shaft by many hands. While he gathered himself, shaking and breathing deeply of the cooler night air, more soldiers poured down the ladders. Bronze cylinders filled with the makings of Greek fire were lowered then, their flammable, oily contents pressurised by hand pumps.
Once in place, the deadly mix was pumped out through a short pipe and ignited by a flaming taper fixed on its end. Mixed with the oil was wood resin, sticky as honey, so that the resultant fire that reached far into the tunnel clung to the clothes and skin of the men it found there.
The Turks in the tunnel, the living and the dead, had a few moments of light by which to consider one another’s startled faces before the flames engulfed them. As the air below ground was consumed by the white-hot blaze, more was sucked down the shaft and the inferno inhaled deeply of it, and all and everyone was incinerated. The timber props burned too, until they could no longer support the weight pressing down upon them and they crumpled, so that scores of terrified men were either burned or buried alive.
John Grant sat close by the lip of the shaft, watching smoke coiling wraith-like into the sky as his comrades emerged coughing and spluttering, and triumphant. Behind them they dragged a pair of prisoners, Turks who had leapt from among the flames into the waiting arms of their tormentors.
‘Let us see what these fine boys may tell us about where the rest of their friends are hiding,’ said one.
‘Rats travel in swarms, do they not,’ said another. ‘I’m sure these ones can be persuaded to point out more of the nests.’
John Grant watched as the hapless azaps were led away towards a nearby guardroom, and then he leaned back and looked up at the sky. There was no moon, no stars. Instead a blanket of cloud lay over the city so that the place had the feel of a corpse wrapped in its shroud.
Behind him, to the east, a barely perceptible light presaged the dawn. Despite his fatigue, he knew sleep would elude him for now. He put his head down on his knees and gave himself over to the fall.
52
‘Did you say why your good lady is neglecting you today?’ asked Doukas. Since he had offered to push the wheeled chariot, the question had to be addressed to the back of Prince Constantine’s head.
‘I am sure she has more and better things to do than push a wheelbarrow around the palace grounds every day,’ said Constantine. ‘To be honest, I like to think of her going about her business unburdened by the weight of my carcass.’
He delivered the lines in what he hoped was a breezy tone, but privately he was surprised by Yaminah’s absence, and without a word of explanation. She had made no mention of other appointments or commitments and yet now it had been a night and a day since he had last seen her. It was unusual, and in spite of his light-heartedness in front of his old teacher, he felt uneasy.
‘Your wedding will be a marvel,’ said Doukas.
They were doing laps of a courtyard (the same, as it happened, beside which Lẽna had spotted Yaminah). Constantine would have been happy enough in his rooms, but his friend had all but insisted on wheeling him out into the fresh air.
‘It seems senseless, if you ask me,’ said Constantine. ‘The Turks are even now at work pounding us into submission with their bombards. Yet more of them are burrowing under our walls night and day. And here we are preparing to shepherd thousands of our people into St Sophia’s to hear two of their kind – or at least one and a half – joined in marriage. It is madness. One lucky hit on the dome, for God’s sake …’
‘But you are looking at it from quite the wrong angle, Costa,’ said Doukas. ‘This is a city and a people that needs proof that life goes on – that our way of life is not easily extinguished. You two will be a light in the darkness.’
‘Their enthusiasm would be best spent upon the walls, with swords in their hands,’ said the prince. ‘I only wish that I might join them there and do something that matters.’
The bombardment rolled around them like a storm. Every few minutes there came the sound of another eruption from one of the guns, followed by an impact somewhere along the four-mile stretch of the land walls. Heavy all around was the smell of burned gunpowder, and hanging over everything was the unmistakable sense of the end of days. And yet in the heart of the Palace of Blachernae, two men took the air – one young and painfully thin and seated in an outlandishly odd wheeled contraption, his legs cycling in front of him in an imitation of life; the other older and portly and gamely pushing as though in need of the exercise.
‘Why do you stay here, Costa?’ asked Doukas. ‘The Turks are so close I would swear I can smell them. They concentrate so much of their fire on the Caligaria Gate, right beside us; the place is little more than a barracks. And yet here you are …’
‘It suits me to carry on,’ said the prince. ‘This is my home. You say our citizens need to see life being lived as before … well, here I am, doing just that.’
Doukas kept pushing, watching Constantine’s whip-thin legs as they rose and fell in turn.
‘What are we calling that beast of a thing they have looming above the river?’ asked Constantine.
‘Ah, you mean the Royal Gun,’ said Doukas. His tone switched at once from that of a friend making conversation to a teacher luxuriating in his knowledge. ‘I am pleased to report that that horrifying and extraordinary monster is no more; it blew itself apart days ago, along with the swines attending it.’
Warming to the thought of reverses lately experienced by the foe, he continued.
‘You say you wish you could be on the walls?’ he said. ‘I only wish you had been on our sea walls to watch the humiliation of the Ottoman fleet.’
‘How so?’ asked Constantine.
‘It was marvellous, Costa, truly marvellous – the work of God himself, I should say.’
Sensing a story, and happy to be lulled and transported by it, far beyond the walls, Constantine relaxed his neck and shoulders and let his head loll back against the chair, eyes closed.
‘It was on the morning of the twentieth day of April that our lookouts spotted four carracks driven hard into the Marmara by a wind from the south,’ Doukas began. ‘They were Genoese, and dispatched by the Holy Father himself. For all that he may despise our faith, still he grieves the loss of so many children.
‘As they came on, they were
sighted by the Turkish fleet – waiting and ready in the mouth of the Bosphorus. I leave you to imagine what orders were received from Mehmet when he learned that a flotilla loaded with good Christian men, weapons and supplies was approaching the city, bringing much-needed hope to a fearful and put-upon people.’
‘You really must write a book,’ said Constantine. ‘Your flights of fancy deserve a wider audience, I promise you.’
Doukas cleared his throat, made suddenly self-conscious by the prince’s teasing.
‘In any event, the Turks set out in their war galleys – scores and scores of them, like swarming ants attacking four grasshoppers. While the carracks sought the safety of the Horn, the oarsmen in their galleys worked harder still to cut them off.
‘Our citizens flooded from their homes in search of high ground from which to watch – climbing church towers and any other structure that gave them sight of the Marmara. Your father was among them, garbed as a soldier as always, and cheering with the rest.
‘The first fire came from the galleys, and the carracks were raked with stone balls and burning javelins and anything else the Turks could fling against the hulls. The bold Genoese struck back with bolts from their crossbows and stone balls from their own guns. Smoke and fire was everywhere, but still the carracks came on, drawing closer to the Horn and to the sanctuary it promised.
‘I swear to you, Costa, it was like watching great bears tormented by snapping dogs—’
‘You said ants and grasshoppers before,’ interrupted Constantine. ‘Now it is bears and dogs. Which is it to be? I need clear images if I am fully to engage with your account.’
‘And then,’ continued Doukas, pretending the prince had not spoken, ‘just when it seemed our ships would clear the pack and make the turn towards a safe harbour, and while our people cheered from the rooftops and from the heights of the hippodrome … the south wind ceased and the carracks were all at once becalmed.’
‘Bears brought to bay,’ said the prince. ‘Grasshoppers with their … tiny ankles tied? Do grasshoppers have ankles?’
Doukas ploughed ahead, his own sails still full of wind in spite of the prince.
‘Seizing the moment, the Turkish commander ordered his fleet to close with the stranded vessels. First one by one and then in ranks the galleys rammed their bows into the hulls of the carracks, or else let the current bring them alongside.
‘The fighting then was hand to hand as the Turks battled and struggled to climb aboard the carracks, while the Genoese sailors and soldiers beat them back with swords and clubs and grappling hooks. Marksmen in the rigging and out on the yardarms picked their targets and skewered the Turks with bolts and with arrows.’
Doukas stopped pushing for a moment and placed both hands upon the prince’s shoulders, then he raised his arms above Constantine’s face and his chubbly fingers writhed like fronds of weed in a stormy sea as he recalled the scene.
‘Costa, it was as though an island of wood and sail had risen up out of the water,’ he said. ‘All four of the carracks came together and ropes were thrown between them so that they became one – a castle of timber with the poop decks looming like towers in the midst of it all.
‘Around them were the Turkish galleys, and the whole mass of it – like dry land, I tell you – swarmed with men hacking and slashing at one another, fighting with fists and feet and teeth.
‘All the while the fighting raged, the current of the sea drove the mess of ships closer and closer to shore. I heard later that Mehmet was so incensed, so maddened by what he was seeing and sensing victory must be his, that he jumped on to his horse and rode it into the sea. He then stood up on his saddle, the better to harangue and abuse his captains.’
‘Now that I would have liked to see,’ said Constantine. ‘Tell me now that he so lost his temper, he overbalanced and fell into the sea and was drowned.’
‘I promise that what happened next must have pained him more than death itself,’ said Doukas.
‘Just as it seemed that our men were at their limit – firing the last of their missiles and with their strength failing after hours of brutish struggle – the wind returned and filled their sails once more.
‘What had seemed dry land was torn asunder as the carracks separated and then gained momentum and crashed through the surrounding flotsam of the galleys. While Mehmet screamed his fury and threatened his men with messy murder, the Genoese broke clear of the last of their assailants and sailed safely into the haven of the Horn.
‘What say you to that, young Costa?’ asked Doukas. He had worked up quite a sweat with the telling of his tale, and he wiped at his brow with the sleeve of his robe.
‘I say pity the Turkish sailors who lived to feel their sultan’s wrath.’
‘Quite so,’ said Doukas. ‘Quite so.’
53
John Grant was blissfully asleep, curled in a ball against one wall of the guardroom, when Lẽna found him. She considered his peaceful face for a moment and then knelt by his side and shook him gently by one shoulder, murmuring his name as she did so.
He surfaced like a diver returning from deep water, and while his eyes were still closed he was a little boy once more and it was his mother’s voice that he heard. He smiled and opened his eyes and found not Jessie, but Jeanne d’Arc.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Your girl,’ said Lẽna. ‘I have found her for you.’
Still wrapped in the befuddlement of sleep, he sat up, his back against the wall, and rubbed his face with both hands.
‘My girl?’
‘The girl from the harbour … standing with the emperor … the one whose beauty left you looking like a stunned fish?’
She had his full attention now and he sat up straighter.
‘What about her?’ he asked. ‘Why do you wake me to tell me this?’
Lẽna paused before continuing, shuffling words in her head.
‘You must come with me,’ she said. ‘She is in danger.’
John Grant would have sworn he felt the push, but it was hopelessly faint and he chose to ignore it.
‘Where?’ he asked. ‘How?’
She straightened then, and he leapt to his feet and followed her silently as she turned and jogged out of the guardroom. His thoughts spun inside his head.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘They have her in a dungeon in one of their prisons,’ she said. ‘I am taking you there now.’
‘She matters to me,’ he said. ‘I had no idea she mattered to you.’
‘She matters,’ said Lẽna. She stopped running and he turned to look at her. The madness of what she was about to say was all but overwhelming. Only the certainty that she was right nonetheless gave her the will to go on.
‘I think … I am sure she is the girl you came here to save.’
John Grant’s mind was flooded with questions and confusion.
‘Badr’s daughter?’ he asked. He shook his head and sighed. ‘How could you know that?’
She had begun running again, and he caught up with her before continuing with his questions.
‘How could you possibly know?’
‘I promise I will tell you,’ she said. ‘But not here and not now. That is the stuff of a conversation for another time and in another place.’
Their path led through covered cloisters and narrow ways until they arrived in the shadow of a building close by the palace.
‘What is this place?’ he asked.
‘It is the Anemas prison,’ she said. ‘I doubt we would ever manage to find our way inside in peacetime – and I am certain we would not want to – but now … well, let’s say that for now the guards’ energies are required elsewhere. The place is all but abandoned.’
They found a door through the massively built wall of the prison compound, and a guardroom beyond occupied by two slumbering sentries. They were grimed with dirt and looked to John Grant as though they had only recently returned from more arduous duties elsewhere.
The citizens of Constantinople should not, he reasoned, be further imperilled by an unnecessary winnowing of their dwindling crop of defenders, and so their lives were spared. Both were quickly and quietly incapacitated nonetheless – their sleep made deeper by well-placed blows to the neck – and now they lay bound and gagged.
‘Sweet dreams, bonny lads,’ said John Grant as they passed through the guardroom and on into the darkened building beyond.
‘How will we find her?’ he asked, as they made their way through the interior and beneath lofty arches that soared overhead. The only light was that provided by tallow lamps in sconces along the walls. Some had failed for want of fuel, and the umber glow provided by the remainder was barely enough to see by.
For all that the place seemed near empty, still there was a detectable scent of human waste and sweat and misery. It hung in the air like a humiliating memory.
‘I think the finding of her is down to you,’ she said.
Before she had finished speaking, he felt the push for the second time that night. It came from beneath his feet, beyond the flagstones of the floor.
‘The dungeons are below ground,’ he said. ‘We have to find some stairs.’
At the end of the chamber, through a doorway so low they had to stoop to pass beneath its lintel, Lẽna found the topmost stair of a spiral flight of stone steps leading downwards into Stygian gloom. John Grant counted fourteen steps before he reached the floor of the prison’s basement level. By the faint light provided by more tallow lamps, he saw heavily bolted doors stretching away from him along both sides of a passageway.
From behind some came low noises, moans as well as words spoken too quietly to be heard. Convinced the place was unguarded, they walked easily through the gloom. At the end of the chamber was a final, larger dungeon. As well as a bolted door there was a barred window that revealed the interior beyond. Sitting on a wooden chair by a large square table, head in hands, was the girl.