Alf knew well how Jehan had felt when he refused to take sanctuary outside of the City. For the thousandth time and with patience outwardly undiminished, he said, “Master Dionysios has done all that he may to make Saint Basil’s secure. He’s repaired the walls and strengthened the gates and hired guards to watch over them all. He’s dismissed most of the students, and those doctors and servants who’ve asked for it; he’s sent away the malingerers and the walking wounded. All of us who remain can take refuge in the hospital, with such of our kin as wish to go.”
Sophia nodded. “I know that. I understand it. I give you leave to go, and to take the children with you.”
“But you won’t come.”
She shook her head. Grief had not changed or weakened her; the certainty of war had roused in her no senseless panic. Yet something had gone out of her. Joy; the deep delight in life that had lain beneath all she did or thought or felt. “This is my house,” she said. “I won’t be driven out of it by anyone. Not even you.”
Alf sighed. “Very well. I stay here. I can’t protect two places at once.”
“No! Her tone was almost angry. “I want the children safe and under guard in Saint Basil’s, and I want you with them.”
“They’ve lost a father. Will you deprive them of their mother?”
“I intend to come out of this with my life and my fortune intact. My family I entrust to you. If harm comes to any of them, I’ll see that you pay a due and proper price.”
“No one will touch them while I live. But, Sophia—”
“I’m content.” She rose from her chair. “I’ll speak with Anna and Irene. Nikki I’ll leave to you.”
As she passed Alf, he held out a hand. “Sophia,” he said, not quite pleading.
She chose not to understand him. “Yes, you’ll be wanting a servant. Corinna, I think. She’s as strong as most men, if it should come to a fight, and she’s loyal to a fault.”
Alf opened his mouth and closed it again. Sophia smiled a small smile with no mirth in it, and left him standing alone.
o0o
Jehan shifted, searching in vain for a comfortable resting place. Men snored on either side of him, one with an elbow wedged in the small of his back; he winced and eased away from it. Water hissed and slapped against the ship’s hull; below, in the hold, the horses stirred, uneasy in their nightlong confinement.
Cautiously Jehan rose. The deck seemed sheathed in metal, shimmering in starlight: rank on rank of armored men, each clad in mail with his head pillowed on his helm. Jehan picked his way through them, rousing grunts and drowsy curses, to lean on the rail. Shields hung there for ornament and protection. A fine brave sight they would be, come morning, each with its vivid blazon.
He ran his hand along the rim of his own. Its blood-red lion glared at the City in defiance of the sigil it bore, the banner of the Prince of Peace.
All hope of peace had died long since. The fleet lay off the farther shore of the Horn, heavily laden with men and horses, grotesque with the shadows of the towers built wall-high on their decks, awaiting the dawn and the assault upon the City.
Soon now. It was black dark, but the air tasted of morning. Far in the east over the forsaken camp, Jehan thought he could discern a faint glimmer.
Among the ships, men had begun to stir, a low muttering that grew slowly louder, mingled with the chink and clash of metal, the thudding of feet on the decks, and the neighing of the horses in the holds.
The glimmer in the east swelled to a glow that conquered all the horizon. One by one the stars faded.
“Can’t you sleep, either?”
Jehan glanced at Henry. His face was a pale blur in the dawn light. “I never sleep before a fight.”
“Praying?” asked Henry.
Jehan laughed shortly. “I save that for afterward. Especially when I’m not at all sure which side God is on.”
“Then why do you fight?”
“Why not?” Jehan flexed his shoulders within his mail, and stretched. “His Eminence would be happier if I didn’t. But I don’t want to sulk in my tent like some shavepate Achilles when my friends are out risking their necks. Besides, I swore an oath. I gave my word when I took the cross, that I’d follow wherever the Crusade and the Doge of Saint Mark led. Should I be forsworn?”
“You have higher vows.”
“The Pope himself set me free to follow my conscience. I would in any case, he said; the least he could do was make it legal.”
It was light enough now for Jehan to see Henry’s smile. “You were wasted on the Church, I think.”
‘“No,” Jehan said. “When this is over, if God spares me, I’m going back to being a monk again. Cloisters, hourly Offices, all the study I could wish for... I’ll be dreaming of it out there when the fighting gets hot.”
“You make it sound almost pleasant.”
Jehan laughed truly this time, and freely. “Of course it is, the morning before a battle when I’m too shaky to sleep.”
Henry grinned and filled his lungs with the morning air. “Fight beside me today, brother.”
“Would I be anywhere else?” Jehan turned side by side with him and went to gird himself for the battle.
o0o
Well before dawn, the soldiers of the empire had ranged themselves along the walls that faced the Golden Horn. The farther shore was a shadow only, a presence in the night, but a presence grown deadly.
Morning crawled over Asia. Slowly the shadow ships took shape, and after a long while, color. Every ship bore on its sides the shields of its men; from every masthead flew a banner or a pennon. The new sun struck fire on their blazons.
“They’re moving,” muttered a voice among the Varangians.
Slowly, weighing anchor, raising sail, striving with oars against the current of the Horn.
A young Guardsman glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were bronze-gold; two minds gazed out of them, Alf’s enfolded in Thea’s. Within the walls across the half-cleared ruins of the fire rose the Hill of Christ the All-seer. A monastery crowned its summit; on the hill before the gates spread the vermilion tents of the Emperor.
Silver flashed beneath the imperial banner. Trumpets rang; timbrels sent their clamor up to heaven. The Emperor’s cry went up, a deep roar: “Christ conquers!”
And from the ships thundered the reply: “Holy Sepulcher!”
The air thickened with stones and arrows. Near Thea, a man bellowed in pain; his fellow nocked arrow to string and let fly. She swept up a heavy stone and hurled it with all her inhuman strength, well-nigh as far and as true as a catapult; another followed it, and another, and another. On the ships, shields bent and shattered; men toppled to the decks.
But the fleet advanced, all the power of the West gathered together, half a league from end to end. The first prow ground to a halt on the shingle. Armed figures swarmed from it.
Ladders swung up against the wall. A galley ran aground full in front of Thea. From the tower on its broad deck a bridge unfolded, crashing down over the parapet, bending under the weight of a dozen men.
On either side of Thea, Varangians gripped their axes. With a roar they sprang forward. Half hewed flesh and steel; half struck at the bridge, battling the Franks who would have bound it to the wall.
Thea turned her axe against the bridge. As she smote, she laughed. “The wind fights with us!” she cried. “Ho! There it blows!”
Southward, driving against the ships, thrusting them back. Of them all, but five had reached the walls; and those wavered, losing their precarious grip.
A sword glittered before her eyes. She parried it with a vicious, curving blow that whirled the swordsman about. He staggered on the bridge and fell.
Thea’s axe crashed down where he had been. The bridge rocked. Two more axes struck it; three; half a dozen. With a groan of parting timbers it collapsed.
For an instant no one moved. One Latin only had set foot on the tower. He lay dead, sprawled over the parapet.
With a swift contemptuous gesture a Guardsman thrust him off. His body plunged to earth in the midst of a company of his fellows, a missile more deadly than any stone.
The Guardsman turned back to the rest, a feral grin on his face. “That for the cursed Normans,” he said.
o0o
“But he was a Fleming.”
“Eh?”
Alf stared blankly up at Thomas’ round puzzled face. He looked down. His body seemed thin and frail after Thea’s robust Varangian-shape. It lay on a pallet in a small bare room, the air sharp-scented with herbs, the air of Saint Basil’s. Nikki slept beside him, Anna and Irene guarded by Corinna across the small space. From the angle of the sun, it was full morning.
He rose, careful not to wake Nikki, smoothing his rumpled tunic.
Thomas managed a creditable smile. “Isn’t that like a child? Up all night, determined not to miss an instant of the adventure; and sound asleep by sunup.”
Alf followed him out and eased the door shut. “It’s an adventure,” he conceded, “but it frightens them, too.”
“Of course it does. That’s half the pleasure.” Thomas looked hard at him. “Were you having a nightmare when I came in?”
“No,” Alf said, “not precisely a nightmare. Why did you wake me? Is something wrong?”
“That depends on what you call wrong.” Thomas was as grave as he could ever be. “The Franks have attacked.”
“I know.”
“Know everything, don’t you?” Thomas shook his head. “You and the Almighty. And of course, Master Dionysios. He wants you up and working. Just because you have a bed here, I’m to tell you, doesn’t mean you’re ill.”
“Or privileged.” Alf shook back his tangled hair. “May I have a bath first?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask.” Thomas grinned up at him. “Don’t take too long about it.”
o0o
From the walls, empty now of enemies, Thea could see the sweep of the battle. Most of the fleet had retreated out of catapult range, driven by the brisk south wind. The shore was thick still with Franks, most afoot, a few mounted on horses that slipped and shied upon the shingle. But she had marked the companies that struggled back to their grounded ships, straining to thrust them out into the open water.
More now as the sun sank. Those who fought on, fought against a solid wall of Greeks.
Up on his hill the Emperor sounded his trumpets. Below the wall, the Greeks gathered and charged. The army above them hurled a new volley into the sea, mingled with that horror of the East, the dragon-lasts of Greek fire.
And the Latins crumpled. Some few strove to hold fast; but their strength had broken. All at once and all as one they gave way. One ship and then another clawed away from the deadly shore.
The enemy had fled. The City had held against them.
“Victory! roared the Guard. They laughed and whooped and threw their axes up flashing in the sun. “Victory! Victory!”
o0o
Jehan stood in the stern of the last ship, leaning on his sword, paying no heed to the few missiles that fell spent about him. All along that lofty and impregnable wall, the ranks of Greeks had turned their backs and bared their buttocks to the fleet.
Beside him Henry laughed, a tired, bitter sound. “Now we know what they really think of us.”
“Didn’t we always know it?” Jehan wiped his blade on his cloak and sheathed it. “I can’t believe it’s ending this way. After all that’s been said and done and promised…”
“You put too much faith in soothsayers.”
Henry was jesting. Perhaps. Jehan pushed back his mail-coif and let the wind cool his burning brow. “So,” he said, “we lost. What now?”
“A council,” Henry answered him.
o0o
They held it on the northern shore of the Horn beyond the camp, in the empty shell of a church; their table was the broken altar.
Count Baudouin struck it with his fist. “Are we knights or women? We’ve lost a battle, true enough. We won the last one. Who’s to say we won’t win the third?”
One of the Frankish lords swept his hand in the direction of the City. “Against that? There are a hundred thousand Greeks inside those walls, and an empire full of them all around us. We lost a hundred men today; they lost none that we know of. How can we hope to face them?”
“How not?” Baudouin’s eyes flashed around the assembly. “It’s more than our hides we’re fighting for. It’s our honor. Are we going to let a herd of traitorous Greeks boast that they had the better of us?”
A young lord nodded eagerly. “They tricked us into setting up an emperor. Then they murdered him and told us all our treaties were worthless. Now they want to trample on our prowess in war. No man will ever be able to say that Thibaut de Langliers was bested by any coward of a Greek.”
The younger men murmured, assenting; their elders sat silent. Baudouin faced the latter. “My lords! Does honor mean nothing to you?”
“Not,” said a grim greybeard, “when it’s so obvious that God is punishing us for our sins. We’ve pursued this unholy war against Christians, under Christ’s cross; we’ll die for it in God’s wrath.”
From among the bishops and the abbots, a man in Benedictine black leaped to his feet. “Not so!” he cried in a voice honed and trained at the pulpit. “God tests us; God tries us to find us strong enough to fight His battle. Have not the Greeks rebelled against our Church? Have they not denied the Lord Pope and twisted the words of our Creed and turned the Mass into a celebration of pagan magnificence? God cries out against them. Woe, woe to my people, that have become even as the Infidel!”
Jehan, seated behind the Cardinal Legate, bit back the words that crowded to his lips. His Eminence sat like a graven image, making no move to suppress such idiocy. They were all in it now, priests and knights, disgustingly eager to set the seal of divine approval on their folly. A just war, a holy war, a Crusade—God willed it; they had only to obey.
It was a lie. But it gave them strength. Their cheeks lost the pallor of fear; their eyes glittered with newborn courage. Someone began to chant a hymn: “Vexilla Regis prodeunt’—-‘Forth advance the banners of Heaven’s King.’”
He would not sing it. He would not.
“Another attack!” a baron called out as the Amen died away. “We failed on the Golden Horn. Why not try the other side? The Bosporus, maybe, or the Sea of Marmora. All the Greek defenses face us here. We can take them from the other side and be in the City before anyone can stop us.”
The council had waked to life and to hope. The Doge cut into the excited babble with a quiet word. “No,” he said. “We cannot venture on the Bosporus. Well before we could mount an assault, wind and current together would sweep us away from the walls into the open sea.”
“That,” someone muttered, “might be all to the good, if only we can be away from here.”
Dandolo glowered in the direction of the dissenter. “Our loss today is a disappointment, but far from the disaster it appears to be. We need only to rest, restore ourselves and our ships, and prepare a new and stronger assault. Two days, my lords. Only two, and we can return in force to take the City.”
“Two days’ rest,” said Baudouin, “and a new plan of attack. Aye, my lords. I swore I’d hear Mass at Easter in Holy Wisdom; that, I swear anew by God and all His saints, I shall do.”
“So shall we all.” Thibaut de Langliers sprang up with a cry. “Deus lo volt! God wills it!”
They echoed him, all of them, even the grimly smiling Doge.
But Jehan set his lips together and said not a word.