by Neil Oliver
The sun was casting the vision into silhouette so that it was hard to look at it and be certain, but surely here was Constantine Palaiologos, they thought, in Christ true emperor and autocrat of the Romans, come to face eternity with a sword in his hand and a crown upon his head.
At the end, only Jeanne d’Arc knew the truth of it. She stood upon the walls of the Great City and remembered how she had been shown her fate in the middle of a storm of thunder and lightning with her hands tied behind her back.
The Christian defenders would remember an angel come among them, mortally wounded and promising salvation in death, but Jeanne d’Arc knew that the angels came for her, and for her alone.
She leapt high, out into the sky and down, down, down among them, and the Turks fell upon her body even as it touched the earth, and hacked and sliced at it until she was utterly destroyed.
When later the head was brought before Mehmet as proof of the emperor’s death, he wept, for his prey had eluded him at the last.
They had thought to bring him the head of Constantine, and believed it was the grimace of final defeat they saw frozen upon its features.
But their sultan knew different.
In their bloodlust and haste they had failed to see it was the head of a woman; a beautiful woman with her hair cut short like a boy’s, and smiling.
78
When Yaminah reached them, they were standing side by side in the dark.
They had heard her anxious footsteps and known it was her – noticed too the approach of a pale glow before she turned the final corner.
Constantine had wanted her to see him standing by himself. He held his arms straight out by his sides for balance, but John Grant was close by, in a similar posture and ready to catch him if he should fall.
She had a flaming torch in her hand, and as she came closer, its light cast their shadows on to the wall of the tunnel behind them. Prince Constantine and John Grant looked into one another’s faces then, for the first time. Like two leaves blown from a tree they had come together for just one moment of the fall.
For an instant the shadow had the look of two birds mantling their wings, or one bird with two heads. Twins, she thought, and gasped. Two souls entwined. With her free hand she fumbled in her pocket, feeling for Ama’s finger bone – and then she remembered what Ama had done for her, and withdrew her empty hand, and promised herself she would remember to tell her.
And by then Yaminah was too close to her prince and to John Grant, and the image was transformed into a simple circle of black.
She dropped the torch and ran into Constantine’s arms, and he held her tight. She squeezed too, and she heard him groan and relaxed her arms and leaned back until she could look into his face and see that she had not hurt him.
‘All is well,’ he said, and he stroked her chestnut-brown hair with the fingers of one hand. ‘I will not be winning any races for a while, but …’
‘But you are standing here before me,’ she said. ‘I love you, Costa. I always have and I always will.’
She kissed him and he kissed her back, and then she broke from him and looked into his face again.
‘How can this be?’ she asked. ‘How can this be?’
‘I owe it to this man, this birdman of yours,’ he said. ‘I drew strength from him and he draws his own, or some of it at least, from me. What else can I say? What say you, birdman?’
John Grant said nothing, but stepped close to Yaminah and took her right hand and slipped a little gold ring on to the middle finger.
He was about to speak, but the sound of footsteps in the darkness beyond them had him bridle and pick up the still flaming torch Yaminah had dropped.
It was Helena who led them – soldiers – each with a naked sword in one hand and a torch in the other.
Constantine turned to Yaminah, a question in his eyes.
‘I was wrong about some people,’ she said. ‘But I was never wrong about you.’
Helena led the way once more, confident of her path. Prince Constantine walked slowly, supported at all times between two soldiers. When they reached a small, heavily barred wooden door, Helena opened it with a long key from within the pockets of her skirt. Beyond was the Sea of Marmara, and a ship safely moored.
In single file the little company poured from the darkness, ducking beneath the low lintel and into the light of the harbour. Yaminah was last. She halted, still in the shadows, and looked at the ring. The gold shone with a soft light, and for the first time she noticed it was fashioned in the shape of a little belt, the buckle undone.
She looked out of the tunnel and into the light, searching for the man who was Constantine’s soul twin, but John Grant had disappeared, as was his intention.
Also by Neil Oliver
Vikings
A History of Ancient Britain
A History of Scotland
Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys
Coast from the Air
Not Forgotten
Two Men in a Trench II
Two Men in a Trench
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2015 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Neil Oliver 2015
The right of Neil Oliver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book, except for those already in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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ISBN: 978 1 4091 5814 1
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