The sun danced and blazed upon the blue waters of the Bosporus; a brisk wind filled the sail, lightening the oarsmen’s work, carrying the barge toward the Golden Horn. Under a striped canopy on the deck the passengers sat at their ease, even the guards relaxed in their vigilance.
Alf had been docile enough when they left Chalcedon, lying quietly on the pallet Sophia had ordered spread for him in the deepest shade. But as they drew nearer to the City he grew restless, until at last he rose and settled his hat firmly upon his head and stood like a hound at gaze, his face toward the wonder across the water. Slowly, as if drawn by the hand, he moved to the rail. He stood full in the sun, though with his back to it.
Sophia sighed and came to his side. “Don’t you think—” she began.
He seemed not to have heard. “Look,” he said, his voice soft with wonder. “Look!”
All the splendor of Byzantium spread before them: the long stretch of the sea walls set with towers, guarding the Queen of Cities; and within their compass rank on rank of roofs and domes and pinnacles. Gold glittered upon them, crosses bristled atop them, greenery cooled the spaces between, rising up and up to the summit of the promontory that was Constantinople.
There on its prow shone the dome of Hagia Sophia with its lesser domes about it like planets about the moon, rising above the gardens of the Acropolis, crowning the Sacred Palace with all its satellites.
“The walls of Paris on the banks of the Seine,” Alf murmured. “The citadel of Saint Mark on the breast of the sea; Rome herself in her crumbling splendor; Alexander’s city at the mouth of the Nile; Cairo of the Saracens; Jerusalem, Damascus, Ephesus; Antioch and holy Nicaea: I’ve seen them all. But never—never in all my wanderings—never such a wonder as this.”
Yet it was a wonder touched with death. The ship had turned now, sailing past the Mangana, striking for the narrow mouth of the Horn. A city spread over its farther shore, once rich, now much battered, guarded by a charred and broken tower.
“Galata,” the ship’s captain said, coming up beside them. “All that shore is infested with Franks, though they’ve camped farther up in the fields beyond the wall. Most of the ships you see there are theirs.”
Sophia’s hands clenched on the rail.
The captain spat. “They broke the chain. Clear across the Horn it went, from Galata to Acropolis Point, thick as a man’s arm and strong enough to hold back a fleet. But they broke it. Hacked at the end on Galata shore and sent their biggest war galley against the middle with wind and oar to drive her, and snapped it like a rotten string.”
“Couldn’t our own fleet do anything?” demanded Sophia.
The man laughed, a harsh bark. “Our Emperor that was, bless his sacred head, called up the fleet, sure enough. Only trouble was, there wasn’t any. A couple of barnacle-ridden scows was all he had. The rest of it was in the Lord Admiral’s pocket. The cursed Franks sailed right over them.”
“And then?” she asked. “What then?”
“Well,” said the captain, “then everybody decided to do some fighting. The Frankish horseboys headed northward to the bridge past Blachernae. Saint Mark’s lads took the sea side. Between them they flattened a good part of the palace up there before the real fight began. The Franks got a drubbing, but the traders got the Petrion and set it afire. Burned down everything from Blachernae hill to Euergetes’ cloister, and as deep in as the Deuteron on the other side of the Middle Way.”
“What of our people? Where were they?”
He shrugged. “They fought. Drove off the Franks, thanks mainly to the Varangians. But the Emperor turned tail and bolted. The mob dragged old Isaac Angelos out of his hole and put the crown back on his head, and the Franks brought in the young pup Alexios and crowned him, and now there’s two Emperors, father and son, as pretty as you please, with the Franks pulling the boy’s puppet-strings and the old man roaming about looking for his poor lost eyes.”
“If I had been Emperor,” Sophia said fiercely, “this would never have happened. The shame of it! All the power of the empire laid low by a mere handful.”
The captain shrugged again. “It’s fate, some people say. Fate and sheer gall. The traders’ leader, what do they call him, the Doge; he’s ninety-five if he’s a day, blind as a bat, and there he was in the lead ship, giving his men what for when they wouldn’t let him off first. They say he fights better, blind as he is, than most young sprouts with two good eyes.”
“He ought to.” It was one of the passengers, a wine merchant from Chios. “I’ve heard that he masterminded the whole affair for revenge, because his city had been slighted when the Emperor was handing out favors.”
“If that were all it was,” the captain said, “he’d have stayed home and pulled strings. The way I’ve heard it, he was in the City twenty years ago when the mob burned down the Latin Quarter, and he was blinded then by the Emperor’s orders. Now he’s making us pay for it in every way he knows how.”
“With Frankish help at least, that’s certain. They’re barbarian fools, but when they’re up on those monstrous horses of theirs in all their armor, they’re impossible to face. A troop of them, I heard once, could break down the walls of Babylon if they were minded to try.”
“If the Emperor hadn’t been a coward, they’d never have got into the City. They were in terror of Greek fire and of the Varangians’ axes.”
“But not in such terror that they turned and fled.” Sophia glared at a galley moored among a hundred lesser vessels near the sands of Galata, its sides hung with bright shields, its lion banner snapping in the breeze; and turned to glare even more terribly at the walls that loomed out of the sea. “The City could have held forever if there had been men to hold her.”
The men shifted uneasily. After a little the captain said, “You should have been a man, Lady.”
“Such a man as sold my city to the Latins?” She tossed her head. “I’m better off as a woman. At least my sex can claim some excuse for cowardice.” She stalked to her seat under the canopy, to cool slowly and to begin to regret her show of temper.
Alf remained by the rail, unconscious of aught but the sight before him. The wind had borne the barge into the teeming heart of the empire. Warehouses clustered all along the shore, thrusting wharves into the Golden Horn; steep slopes rose beyond to the white ridge of the Middle Way, clothed in roofs as a mountain is clothed in trees.
Even from so far he could hear and smell the City: a ceaseless roar like the roar of the northern sea; a manifold reek of men and beasts, flowers, spices, salt brine and offal, with an undertone of smoke and blood. At the far end of the strait he could see the battered walls, and beyond them great gaps in the roofs and towers, or charred remnants thrusting blackly toward the sky.
He hardly noticed when Sophia spoke to him, until she tugged sharply at his sleeve. “Come. Up. Into my litter.”
With an effort he brought himself into focus. A litter stood on the pier, its bearers waiting patiently. None of the many officials standing about, inspecting cargo, peering at lists, interrogating passengers, seemed at all interested in him, although one bowed to his companion.
“Come,” she repeated. “It’s all been seen to. Get in.”
He looked down at the woman. She was small even for an easterner; her head came barely to his shoulder. “I’ll walk,” he said.
“You’ll do no such thing. Get in.”
“But—”
“Get in!”
She was small, but she had a giant’s strength of will. He smiled his wry smile, bowed and obeyed. She settled opposite him. With a smooth concerted motion the bearers raised the litter to their shoulders and paced forward. The escort fell into place about it with Sophia’s maid trudging sullenly behind.
The house of Bardas Akestas stood at the higher end of a narrow twisting street in the shadow of the Church of the Apostles, a bleak forbidding wall broken only by a grating or two and a gate of gilded iron. Even as the bearers paused before it, the gate burst open, releasing a flood of people.
There were, Alf realized afterward, less than half a dozen in all: three children of various sizes and sexes, an elderly porter, and a mountainous woman with a voice as deep as a man’s.
They overwhelmed the arrivals with shouts and cries, sweeping them into a sunlit courtyard. The light was dazzling after the high-walled dimness of the street, the children’s joy dizzyingly loud. Alf made himself invisible in his corner of the litter and waited for his head to stop reeling.
“Come now,” a new voice said over the uproar, deep and quiet. “What is all this?”
At once there was silence. The speaker came forward, a short broad man in a grey gown. The servants stepped back; the children leaped to attention. Sophia stepped from the litter, smoothed her skirts, and said, “Good day, Bardas.”
“Sophia.” He was as unruffled as she. “How was your journey?”
“Bearable,” she replied.
The smaller of the two girl-children wriggled with impatience. “Father,” she burst out at last. “Mother’s home. Mother’s home!”
Sophia swayed under a new assault. Over the children’s heads she smiled at her husband; he nodded back briskly, but there was a smile in his eyes.
The elder girl had greeted her mother with a warm embrace, but dignity forbade her to join in the others’ exuberance. While Nikki clung tightly to his mother’s skirts and Anna babbled whole months’ worth of happenings in one breathless rush, she stood aloof, trying to imitate her father’s lofty calm. Her eyes were taking it all in, litter, bearers, and escort; the servants coming from everywhere to greet their mistress; plump Katya the maid deep in colloquy with the towering nurse; and if that was not she sitting in the litter, then—
“Mother,” she said suddenly, “who is this?”
Sophia nodded in response to Anna’s flood of news, lifted Nikki in her arms, and turned toward the litter. Its occupant emerged slowly and somewhat unsteadily: a tall thin figure in pilgrim’s dress, with a terribly ravaged face and clear pale eyes gazing out of it. Irene forgot her dignity and loosed a little shriek; Nikki hid his face in his mother’s shoulder.
“My guest,” said Sophia. “Alfred of Saint Ruan’s in Anglia, who has come up from Jerusalem to see our City.”
They all stared, save Bardas who bowed and said, “Be welcome to House Akestas.”
Alf returned the bow with grace and precision; straightened and swayed. Several of the servants sprang to his aid. Gently but firmly they bore him into the cool shade of the house.