A Place Called Armageddon (23 page)

She laughed. ‘Sleep,’ she said.

‘But you,’ he grunted, reaching for her.

It was as she suspected. Her first lover, the janissary, had often been this drunk. He’d attempt to love her, have as little success as Gregoras had now. His hands moved over her even as his eyes closed.

‘Sleep,’ she said, taking a hand, kissing it.

‘All right,’ he replied, pulling her a little closer, laying his head to her breast.

She lay there as his breathing eased. He began to snore. She was a little disappointed. She had been surprised by the passion of that night in Dubrovnik. More than surprised, for with her other men, Jew and janissary, lovemaking had always seemed much for them, little for her. With Gregoras, though, it had not been like that; he had given as much as he had taken. And though she knew that the fish oil around the doorframe had bound him to her, she would not have minded the different spell further lovemaking would cast. Wouldn’t have minded the pleasure he’d have given her either!

Then another thought came. She and her man of destiny together in Constantinople … along with the book of the Arab alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan. It was kept in the monastery of Manuel. But why wait for Mehmet to break down the walls to get it? Why not find out where it was, go with her lover and steal the book now?

She laughed quietly. She’d heard that the city was just about to close its gates, break its bridges. She had to leave, and soon, or be trapped. But she could stay one more day, and wait for him to be sober again.

His snoring grew louder. She pushed him, and he grunted and rolled onto his side. Pulling a few sacks around them, she curled around his back. She felt the strength of him through his clothes. Perhaps, she thought, if he is not too fouled with wine, we will satisfy both my desires in the morning.

Gregoras awoke alone, to voices and flaring light. He did not know where he was, but wherever he was was dark, though light flickered through gaps and splits in what had to be a wall. He had a vague memory of being brought here, led by some masked youth after the fight, which he remembered only a little more clearly. He knew he’d tackled some Venetians … and it was Italian with a Venetian accent that had woken him now. He sat up swiftly, could not restrain the groan, feeling as if someone had driven a spike through his forehead. He pulled out his dagger and stumbled to his feet.

His first thought was that the men he’d attacked – or more likely their unhurt friends – had tracked him down. But as he managed to bring his senses into wakefulness, he realised that the conversation beyond the wooden walls was not about him. When he caught a word, he leaned forward till his head touched the wood of the wall. It cooled it a little, and he listened.

The word was ‘escape’.

‘Because the place is doomed, that’s why,’ came the voice again. ‘You want to stay and be a dead hero, you can. But all the other captains are agreed. We get out and we get out now.’

‘All of Venice? What of our city’s honour?’ the other man said.

‘No, not all. Only us of the Black Sea fleet who were caught here by winds and fate. Most Venetians will remain.’

‘I thought
all
must remain. Didn’t the Council so order?’

‘I piss in the water the Council drinks! Most of them don’t have holds full of silks and spices that will make each of us captains a fortune back home – and nothing if the Turks seize them when they take this place. As they will.’

‘I don’t know. I …’

The other man must have walked away, because his voice came from further off. ‘Well, it’s up to you, Enrico. But in another few days the Greeks will have put their damn boom across the Horn and we’ll be trapped. It is agreed. My crew’s already aboard the
Raven
and we just await the dawn tide. Which comes soon, for there is light in the east already. I only came to find you and give you the choice. You decide.’

‘Wait!’

Boot steps receded, along with low voices. Gregoras sheathed his dagger, sat, placing his back against the wall. So the Venetians were fleeing, he thought. Some of them anyway. Before the boom went up and they had no choice but to fight. He lowered his head into his hands. And he? He, who had returned to the city he hated, that had taken everything from him, that he had desired never to see again? And what had he found on his return? A son whose life he could have no part of. A woman he once loved, lost to him for ever.

He was close enough to the docks to hear commands being given. Hissed, not shouted, urgent for all that. He heard oars going in the water, boats setting out for larger boats offshore. Venetian rats were deserting a holed vessel. And who could blame them? Was it their fight, after all?

Was it his?

He lurched to his feet. There was nothing in the city that he needed – except perhaps his crossbow. But he could always get another of those, while the gold he’d come for he knew he’d never see now. That could be found too, probably when he found that crossbow and a war to use it in. Any war but this one.

As he stepped out through the door, he stumbled on something. It glimmered in the faint light of the approaching dawn and he bent to pick it up, gasped when he saw what he held. A quarrel. A bolt for the crossbow he was going to seek. It seemed like a sign … and an odd thing to find in a doorway near the docks. Odder still when he brought it close to his eyes and saw that not all its flights were there, but the ones that were were made from heron’s feathers – just like the one he’d plucked from John Grant’s satchel in Korcula.

He slipped it into a pocket, where its head clinked against something. He delved, found coins, brass knuckles – and his ivory nose. It reminded him of the fight, and his rescue by the strange masked youth. Had he even been real? Where had he gone? He would have liked to have thanked him.

He heard more voices from the docks. He had no time to wait for his benefactor. But in case he returned, he stepped back to the entrance of the warehouse and threw a silver Ragusan libertine onto the pile of jute sacks. A reward, should the youth come back and find it.

He tied the false nose, then his mask, into place as he walked the short distance to the docks. Men were holding a rowboat close to the jetty. ‘A place for one more,’ he said, adopting the accent he hated.

One of the holding men looked up. ‘What ship?’

What was the name the captain had said? ‘The
Raven
,’ he answered.

‘That’s her weighing anchor now,’ the man said, nodding to the water. ‘But we’ll likely rendezvous in Chios or Lesbos. You can catch up with her there.’

Gregoras nodded, took the man’s hand, stepped aboard, dropped onto a bench. Two men came running down the dock, and when they were seated too, the boat shoved off. They made good speed across the waters of the Horn towards the black shapes further out. It was light enough now to make out the city walls behind him. A little west of where he’d embarked was the gate of Theodosia. If he looked hard, he would have been able to spy a little platform of rock before it. Ghosts upon it. His. Sofia’s. Who they’d made there.

Gregoras closed his eyes.

Leilah watched the last of the seven ships dance as it entered the waters where the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara all met, causing chop that was called
anafor
in the Turkish tongue. If Gregoras had woken as wine-heavy as she expected, his stomach would not relish the lurching.

It was the ship he was on; she’d seen him board it, her crossbow eye spotting him, recognising his black cloak and hat as he climbed up the rope ladder. When she’d returned to the warehouse, found him missing, she’d run where she’d thought he might go, in search of what she’d gone to fetch for his awakening – water, in a skin under her arm. But he wasn’t in the shack of a tavern on the dock. He was already upon the sea.

The ship rounded Acropolis Point and was gone. Still she didn’t move, stood squinting against sunlight reflecting off water. The sun had cleared the rain clouds away, and sparkled now on the rooftops and towers of Galata across from her. All was bright – except in her heart.

With a curse, she shut her eyes to the sunlight, tried to think. She’d been foolish to consider stealing the book now. It was clear, in the charts she’d drawn – her own, Mehmet’s, Gregoras’s – when it would be hers. After the city was taken, not before. But still Gregoras had to be there for that. He was not meant to leave.

And yet? That he had gone did not mean he could not return. Ships put about. Ships … sank.

She smiled, as her shoulders eased. He had walked through the door lined with fish oil. He was hexed, was and would for ever be hers. And there were other hexes she knew, to do with everything from love to finding a lost comb. Curses too, which could be laid on man or anything he wrought. Including what he sailed in.

All she needed was something of his, something from his hand. In her trade, silver was always preferable.

She opened her eyes, turned away from the water to the land, into the sun. Laughing, she spun high into the air the coin she’d found where he’d lain, watching as it flashed and sparkled, rose and fell against the walls of doomed Constantinople.

–
FIFTEEN
–

The Laughing Dove

Constantinople
11 April 1453

It was such a familiar sound. Yet it always surprised her, that chuckle right outside her window, high-pitched, staccato. ‘Ha ha
ha
ha ha ha,’ it came again, caught between a call and a croon, the middle of the laugh as if the joke had only then been fully realised.

‘Swiftly! Minerva! Here! Here!’ Sofia called softly.

Her daughter looked up from the floor and the sprawl of wool poppets she had there. ‘I am teaching,’ she said, frowning at the interruption.

‘And will again, my duckling,’ Sofia whispered. ‘But come here now. I have something lovely to show you.’

Minerva rose, danced over. ‘A sweetmeat?’

Sofia shook her head. Since the bridges were broken, and the boom drawn across the Golden Horn, little new food had come into the city. Sweetmeats were in short supply. ‘Something better. Something wonderful. Shh!’ She put her finger to her lips. ‘And look.’

She drew her daughter a few paces towards the centre of the room, into the rectangle of morning light that came from the open window. ‘There,’ she said, pointing.

Minerva sucked in a breath. ‘Ooh! So lovely.’ She stretched up, put her lips close to her mother’s ear, whispered loudly, ‘What is it?’

‘It’s called a laughing dove. Listen!’

That call came again, a series of notes, another joke understood. Minerva giggled. ‘It thinks it’s funny!’

‘Yes. They come every year. It means spring is truly here at last. I was beginning to doubt it would come.’ The bird was rooting in a box of earth Sofia kept on the window ledge. ‘See the head? It’s your favourite colour, pink.’

‘Oh yes. And it has spots on its throat. Black spots!’

‘It has. And though the wings are red, can you see the blue and grey in them too?’ Sofia sighed. ‘So beautiful. It doesn’t care about anything …’ she faltered, ‘out there. It only wants to laugh. And find someone to laugh with.’

Minerva looked up. Her mother had stopped smiling. There was some darkness in her eyes. Minerva wanted it to go away. ‘I’ll get you the funny bird,’ she cried. Leaping up, she ran through the sunlight towards the window.

The startled dove took off. A flash of chestnut underwings and it was gone.

‘Oh.’ Minerva stopped, fingers up and into her mouth.

Sofia rose from her knees, went and put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Do not worry, child. It will return.’

She stared out of the window, at a sky clear of clouds, a vibrant pigeon-egg blue. Few sounds came from the street, unusual on such a day and such a busy route to the wharves. But she knew where most of the people were – where she would be, had not Theon forbade it. Upon the walls, looking at what else the spring had brought her beloved city. Waiting for a sound that had no laughter in it.

The laughing dove flew north-west. Seeking open ground beyond the stones of men, his call changed from coo to the cry of flight, which he hoped would bring him to others of his kind. When he reached the Blachernae palace, an avenue of Judas trees in full bloom within its walls caught his questing eye. He dropped down to settle on a branch, and laughed again.

Theon glanced up, but could not see the source of the laughter within the pink explosions, or what it was that was mocking him. Yet it seemed fitting that the sound should accompany him as he walked the last stretch of ground before the battlements, deriding his failures. Failures emphasised by the armour he had been forced to don, the weapons he now carried. His true skills – in diplomacy, subversion, manipulation – were to be put aside. The ones he had little skill in were called upon now. He was
kavallarios
, a knight in the imperial service, of the noble family of Lascaris. The fact that the lowliest
bashibazouk
in the Turkish forces could probably strip him of his father’s sword and kill him with it was of no consequence. He must be seen to swing it at his emperor’s side.

His father’s sword! It was a heavy monster, not like the elegant scimitars even Theon could lift and many in the city used. But old swords, like ancient loyalties, had to be borne. It swung from his belt now, slapping his greaves with a repetitive and annoying clang.

He paused to catch his breath, pulling away the gorget from his throat. Despite all the sewing and padding that Sofia had done, the armour – and especially the domed helmet – chafed. His brother would love this, he knew, would be bounding up the stairs ahead, eager for the fight. Where was he? He had not glimpsed him since the night of their reunion three months before. Was he now part of the desperately thin line of men that ran the length of the land walls? One of two or three men watching from each tower along the sea? Or had he already slipped away? That was most likely. He was still a fugitive, after all.