The Golden Horn Read online

  She folded each treasure away again. Penniless Latin pilgrims were common enough, and sun-sickness their eternal companion. But she had never seen one so young or so pale or so badly burned.

  The doctor arrived as she sat wondering: a stately Arab, very grave and very learned, escorted by a boy with a box of medicines. He frowned when Sophia revealed her knowledge of the patient’s condition, frowned more deeply when it became apparent that she knew neither his name nor his nation, and scowled blackly at the sufferer himself, who had begun to stir and murmur. Grimly he bent to his examination.

  At length he straightened. His eyes were cold.

  “Can anything be done?” Sophia asked of him.

  “You may summon a priest.”

  Her breath caught. “He’s dying?”

  The man’s thin lips tightened. “He will not die.”

  “Then why—”

  “To be rid of him.” He bowed stiffly, conveying with eloquence his opinion of a woman who traveled about without husband or kinsman to ward her, and who took up from the roadside such a creature as this. “By your leave, madam…”

  “You do not have it!” She startled herself with her own sharpness. “This boy is ill. Can you treat him or can you not?”

  She had angered him, but she had also touched his pride. “I can heal him. But I am bound only to the care of men. This” —He made a sign over the pilgrim, as if to avert some evil— “can better be dealt with by a man of God.”

  “I shall see to that. You,” she said coldly, “may do your office.”

  For a moment she thought that he would leave. But he bowed even more stiffly than before, and did as she bade.

  When he had gone, Sophia left her chair to stand over the pilgrim. His face was salved and lightly bandaged; his breathing seemed to have eased. He did not look evil.

  She slipped the carven crucifix from his wallet and crossed herself with it. Half in apprehension, half in defiance, she laid it on his breast. After an interminable moment he stirred. His groping hand found the cross, closed over it. He sighed a little and lay still.

  Sophia remained with him. They brought her supper there; she ate only enough to quiet hunger and set the rest aside.

  Perhaps she dozed. She was stiff and her head ached, and something had changed. She glanced about, puzzled. It was dark, the lamps lit, but that was not the strangeness.

  From amid the bandages his eyes watched her. Great calm eyes the color of silver-gilt.

  She smiled. “Good evening,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Foolish.” His Greek was accented but excellent. “You’re most kind to me, my lady.”

  “Sophia Chrysolora.”

  “Alfred of Saint Ruan’s in Anglia.”

  “You’ve come a long way, Alfred of—Saint Ruan’s?”

  “Alf.” His eyes took in the room. “And this?”

  “The Inn of Saint Christopher in Chalcedon.”

  “Ah.” It was a sigh. “Then I’m deeply in your debt.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I shouldn’t be tiring you with talking.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I want to talk. I don’t remember much. How did I come here?”

  “I found you in the road.” There was water in a jar by the bed; she supported his head and helped him to drink. “Are you hungry?”

  “No. Thank you.” He lay back. His hands explored the bandages, fumbling with them. Before she could stop him, he had them off.

  It was not a pleasant sight. He must have seen it in her face, for his hand half lifted as if to cover it. But he did not complete the gesture. “The air will heal it,” he said, “if you can bear to look.”

  “I can bear it. It’s only…the doctor…”

  “He knows his trade, I’m sure, and he concocts an excellent salve. But his wrappings will strangle me and do my skin no good at all.”

  She looked at him: the young man’s body, the flayed mask, the bright eyes that seemed to know so much. Under the swollen and blistered skin, she thought his features might be very fine. “You know a little of healing?” she asked.

  “A little,” he admitted. “I worked in Saint Luke’s hospital in Jerusalem.”

  “Then you know a good deal more than a little.”

  He shrugged, one-sided. “It didn’t keep me from making a fool of myself.” He inspected his hands, raw and red as they were, and on one palm the deep scratches. His eyes flinched; he closed them. Yet his words were quiet. “You must be very tired with caring for such a great idiot as I am, and you an utter stranger. Please don’t let me keep you from your rest.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I have a daughter who’s not so very much younger than you. She’ll be fourteen next month.”

  There was no way to read his face. “I’m…somewhat…older than that. Is she living in the City?”

  “With the rest of my family. My husband would find you interesting; he’s His Imperial Majesty’s Overseer of the Hospitals.”

  “Is he a doctor?”

  She smiled. “Bardas? No, only a bureaucrat. He sees to it that the doctors have places to work and people to work on and the wherewithal for both.”

  Was that an answering smile? “A most essential personage.”

  He did not seem weary, but she rose briskly, smoothing her skirts. “I’ve been keeping you awake. Would you sleep better if I left?”

  “If I knew that you yourself would sleep.”

  This, she reflected as she left him, was a very pleasant young man. Clever certainly, and old for his years. But no demon’s get. The doctor was a superstitious fool.

  When she looked in later, he lay deep in sleep, his cross on the pillow next to his cheek. She withdrew softly and went to her own bed.

  o0o

  Sophia was up with the sun, but she found Alf awake before her. Up, in fact, and dressed in his rags that the servants had cleaned and mended as much as they might, and eating with good appetite.

  In the morning light his face seemed much better, the swelling subsided, the blisters broken or fading. His smile was recognizable as such, as he rose and bowed and offered her his cup. “Will you eat with me? There’s enough for two.”

  For a moment she could do no more than stare. At last she managed a smile and sat where she had sat in the night. “You seem to have mended very quickly,” she said.

  He paused in filling a plate for her. “Sometimes a hurt can look worse than it is. And you cared for me well and promptly. So you see, I’ve learned a much-needed lesson and am only a little the worse for it.”

  “A lesson?”

  “About walking unprotected in the sun. About Greek charity. And,” he added, setting the plate before her and lowering his eyes, “about my own vanity. If my face were my fortune, I’d have lost it yesterday.”

  “You’ll get it back,” she assured him.

  His smile turned wry, but he only said, “Please eat. I’ve had all I need.”

  She discovered that she was hungry. Between bites she said, “I’ve arranged for you to stay here until you’ve recovered. The innkeeper has orders not to let you go without a doctor’s approval, and to tend you like a prince.”

  He seemed taken aback. “Lady…you’re most generous. But I can’t accept so great a gift.”

  She waved that away. “Call it my debt to God and man.”

  “You’ve paid that in full already.” He stood close to her, so that she had to tilt her head back to see his face. As if he sensed her discomfort, he dropped to one knee, setting his head lower than hers. “My lady, I’m most grateful for what you’ve done. I’ll pray for you if you’ll accept the prayers of a Latin heretic. But I can’t take your gift.”

  She looked hard at him. He moved with striking grace, but he was not quite steady; his breath came a shade too rapidly. And there was his face. “You’re not as well as you pretend.”

  “I’m well enough to travel.”

  “I don’t think so.” She regarded him sternly. “You w
ere dangerously ill when I found you. You’re shaking now though you think you can hide it. Go back to bed.”

  He sat on his heels. “I’m sorry, my lady. I can’t.”

  If he had been one of her offspring, she would have fetched him a sharp slap to teach him sense. “You are a stubborn boy. Must I call my men to put you to bed by force?”

  “It wouldn’t be very wise,” he said.

  “Arrogant too.”

  His head bowed. “I’m sorry. But I have to go to the City.”

  “Why? Are you one of the Crusaders?”

  “God forbid!” His vehemence startled her; he went on more quietly, “I’m as filthy a Latin as any. But not…of that kind. No; I want to see the City and learn from its wise men and worship in its holy places. While there is time. There’s so little left. So very little.”

  She shivered though the morning was already hot. His eyes were wide and luminous, the color of water poured out in the sun, his voice soft and rather sad. “Understand,” he said. “Those are not monsters camped across the Horn, but men like any others. Most of them think they’ve only paused on their way to free the Holy Sepulcher. They can’t see what must happen now they’ve come so far into such hostile country, led on by a foolish prince’s promises. Both greed and honor will have their due. And then—” He stopped. Perhaps, at last, he had seen her fear.

  “And then?” she asked through a dry throat.

  He turned away, fists clenched at his sides. “Nothing. Nothing. I’ve been listening to too many doomsayers.”

  Her voice came hard and harsh. “You are mad. And you’re coming with me. We’ll be sailing well before noon; we’ll be sheltered from the sun; and you can rest a little. And when we come to the City—have you a place to stay?”

  “I’ll find one.”

  “‘The lilies of the field…’” she murmured. “You need a keeper, do you know that? You’ll stay with us.”

  He faced her. “What will people say?”

  “That I’m as much a fool as ever.”

  “And your husband?”

  “Precisely the same.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “Do you object to the hospitality of the perfidious Greeks?”

  She was half jesting. But only half. He spread his hands. “I could be a thief, or—or a murderer. I could slay you all in your beds and make off with everything you own.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Oh, Lady!” He seemed caught between laughter and tears. “The doctor was right, you know. You’d do well to be rid of me.”

  “Are you a demon?”

  He shook his head. “But—”

  “So,” Sophia said brusquely. “I’ve things to see to. I’ll send for you when it’s time to leave.”

  3.

  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 t
ry.”

  “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.