The Golden Horn Page 7

  “Do you now?” said Master Dionysios. “Prove it.”

  “He flatters me, sir,” Jehan answered, “but then, he did the training. I suppose he’s entitled to brag a little.”

  The Master glanced from the soot-streaked young face to the one that was somewhat cleaner and seemed a good deal younger. Whatever his thoughts, he only growled, “I suppose you know what a bath is for. When that’s done, you can find work enough to do.”

  Jehan bowed.

  “And,” Master Dionysios added grimly, “mind you, sir Frank. If anyone dies here, he won’t be sent to Heaven or Hell by a heretic. We can use your hands, and your training if you have any. Leave the prayers to those who can say them properly.”

  Jehan’s eyes smoldered, but he held his tongue and bowed again with frigid correctness.

  o0o

  Deep night brought no relief, no slackening in the flood of wounded and dying. With all the hospital’s rooms and corridors filled, Master Dionysios sent the rest into the garden to be tended by the light of lamps and of the fire itself, a fierce red glow all about them.

  Bathed and shaven and dressed in a fresh tunic that strained at every seam but was at least clean, Jehan labored in the garden. The scent of flowers was sweet and strong even over the stench of smoke and burning flesh; it refreshed him as the water had when he came out of the fire. Sometimes he saw Alf, marked by his luminous pallor, tending those whose hurts were greatest. Once he thought he recognized Bardas’ heavyset figure, if truly it was His Majesty’s Overseer of the Hospitals who held a man’s head while a surgeon cut away the remnants of a hand.

  Thea attached herself to Jehan soon after he began, still in her boy’s clothes but without her cap. “I thought you’d be helping Alf,” he said.

  She handed him the knife he had been reaching for. “He doesn’t need any help.”

  “And you think I do?”

  “l have no talent at all for healing,” she said, “but I’m good at holding heads and at talking sense into people.”

  “And at keeping fire away from hospitals?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well enough then,” he said. “If anyone asks you, you’re my apprentice.” He had a glimpse of her swift smile before she bent to comfort the child who lay at their feet, his eyes fixed in terror upon Jehan’s knife.

  o0o

  Alf saw the sunrise from the roof of Saint Basil’s, whither Master Dionysios had driven him with orders that he not return until he had rested and eaten. Food, he could not face; his body, stronger than a man’s, was not yet desperate for sleep. Others of the healers tossed and murmured under a canopy drenched with water to keep off the fire, with Jehan among them, sleeping like the dead.

  He sat on the roof’s edge and clasped his knees. The dawn light seemed a feeble thing beside the fire that raged still in the City. It had retreated somewhat from the hospital, feeding now to the southward; flames had crept forth to lick the dome of Hagia Sophia. All between blazed or smoldered or crumbled in ruins: tenements, gardens, palaces, churches, and the arches and columns of the fora.

  “People are saying that it’s the wrath of God,” Thea said, settling beside him.

  “The wrath of man can be well-nigh as terrible.”

  She leaned against him and laid her head on his shoulder. “If you’re tired,” she said, “I can shield us alone for a while.”

  He sighed. “I’m not as tired as that. House Akestas is safe; Saint Basil’s will be now, I think.”

  “Unless the wind changes.”

  “Pray then. God ought to hear one of us.”

  She was silent. His arm had settled itself about her shoulders; he seemed unaware of it, staring out again over the ravaged City. His eyes were bleak. “All our power,” he murmured, “great enough in old days to make us gods. But neither of us can do more here than keep the fire away from a pair of houses.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “A little.” He shivered. “Not enough to do any good at all.”

  “It’s too big now for only two of us, and one all but untrained.”

  “I know that. It’s only…I saw this, Thea. I saw it. And when it started, when I could have done something, I couldn’t move. I could only stand and gape like a fool.”

  “When I was in Rhiyana,” she said, “the King’s sister fell ill. She was mortal, you see, and not young. Gwydion has great powers of healing, almost as great as yours, and his Queen has no less. They stayed with the Lady Alianora through every moment of her sickness and did everything they could do. But she died. We all mourned her, Gwydion most of all. She had been his favorite, his little sister who loved her changeling brother more than anyone else in the world. But…she died. Some things none of us can change.”

  “Death and fate and the destruction of cities. I can bear that because I must. What’s unbearable is that I have to know it all before it happens.”

  “Have to, Alf?”

  “I’ve always been able to see at will in that place inside of me where my power lies. It looks like a tapestry with its edges stretching away into infinity. But when fate is strong or disaster imminent and inevitable, I can hardly think or feel or see. I only know what must be, and what no effort of mine can change.”

  “It’s been heavy on you ever since Jerusalem.”

  He nodded. “When Morwin died, he wanted me to find peace in the Holy City. For a little while I did find it. But I forgot what I should have known, that neither happiness nor peace can long endure. Not in this world.”

  “Of course not. We need to be miserable to know what it really is to be happy.” She rose, drawing him with her. “We can’t work as much of a miracle as this city needs. But we can do more than most. Especially when we’ve put a little food in our stomachs.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Hungry,” she finished for him. “You never are. But you’re feeling very, very sorry for yourself. How much sorrier you’d feel if you’d lost your house and all you owned, and most of your family, and a good part of your skin besides.”

  He started as if she had slapped him; flushed, and paled. “I could learn to hate you,” he said.

  “You could. I’m too fond of telling the truth, aren’t I, little Brother?”

  “And I can’t become a falcon to fly away from it.”

  That struck home, but she laughed. “See? You’ve caught it from me. Come down with me and be kind to your poor body for once, the better to fight the rest of this battle.”

  He hesitated. She turned her back on him and began to pick her way among the sleepers.

  As he followed her, the sun climbed at last over the rim of the world, its great orb the color of blood or of fire.

  11.

  The fire was dead. The last embers smoldered sullenly, while here and there among them figures moved, searching for the dead, beginning the long labor of clearing away the ruins and building anew where they had been. Even lamentation was muted, cursing subdued, numbed by the immensity of the destruction.

  Alf lay in his own bed in House Akestas, its softness strange after so many nights of catching what rest he could wherever he might. To be clean, to breathe air that bore no taint of smoke, to have no pain about him but only the peace of a sleeping household—he could not yet believe that it was so. In a little while Master Dionysios would wake him, or a bolt of agony would pierce through all the levels of his sleep and thrust him back into the battle.

  His mind slid away from remembrance. He had passed beyond weariness to a state like drunkenness, all his inner defenses weakened or cast down. His body seemed made of air, the hand he raised before his face a thing of mist and moonlight. It turned, flexed—wonderful creation, so to yield to his will.

  His eyes ran from it along his arm to his shoulder, down the long line of his body to his distant feet. He did not often stop to consider himself. Feet had to be shod or sandaled for walking; hands served one’s needs; hair had to be washed and cut and kept out of one’s face. Everything between, o
ne kept clean and fed and covered as much as one might, and tried to forget.

  It was not an ill body. Somewhat too thin perhaps, but strong, with few enough needs. Its curse it shared with his face: its moon-white skin that could endure no sunlight without the shielding of power, and its beauty. He had seen its like along the Middle Way, in old gods and in the marble kouroi that smiled inscrutably upon the City, shameless in their nakedness.

  He breathed deep. The air smelled of roses and of rain. Idly, without thought, he let his hand follow the lines of hip and thigh. There was a lazy pleasure in it, in tracing the planes and angles, the taut play of muscles beneath the skin, so different from a woman’s smooth curves. From one woman’s, from one body he had never had the courage to learn, nor the will to cast away.

  He was on his feet. Supple and serene this body was, when the clamoring mind would let it be. It could glide, it could turn. It could dance, great sensuous sin, to the music that was in it. Heart and blood, lungs and brain, set the measure, ceaseless, complex, inescapable. He spun; his hair whipped his shoulders, scarred flesh oblivious, whole flesh struck with a lash of pleasure. His eyes blurred darkness into light, and light into nameless splendor, and nameless splendor into the sheen of bronze and gold.

  He dropped exhausted. The glory died. He was mere mud, sweat and earth shaped in a form that men’s eyes reckoned fair. Fair and foul, stained with sin and the will to sin, centered on flesh, who had vaunted his knowledge of God. He had never known more than his own vanity.

  His fingers raked his hair. Thick as a woman’s, fine as a child’s, tear it, tear it out. The face, the beautiful beardless face, rend it, mar it—

  “Alfred!”

  All his body snapped taut, arched back from the vise that bound his wrists. It tightened into pain, into agony. Without warning it let him fall. His dream, formless light, had taken flesh; it glared down at him, bronze and gold and unbearably beautiful.

  He swallowed. His throat ached. She was splendid in her anger, and surely she knew it; she was always angry.

  “You always give me reason to be.” Thea dragged him up and shook him. “Idiot! How long since you slept? How long since you ate?”

  “You made me,” he said, “or Jehan. I forget.” He willed her into focus. “You went away.”

  “I’ve come back.” She was still holding him. He touched her cheek. For all the fire of her temper, it was cool, and she did not shake him off. It was he who drew back, who gathered himself together, who found a blanket to cover his nakedness.

  “I ate,” he said with care, with a touch of bitterness. “Sophia saw to it. I drank honeyed milk with the rest of the children. No wine, milady nurse.”

  “No sleep, either, and no sense at all.”

  He lay where she willed him, where his own will would have him. Her temper was shifting, changing. Her eyes were more gold than bronze. She was as bare as he, and he had not even seen. She bent over him.

  He thrust her back, spinning her about, felling her with force that shook them both. He had forgotten how hideously strong he was.

  He fell to his knees beside her, choking on self-disgust. He had bruised her, hip, breast, cheekbone.

  She sat up. He could not read her eyes within the tangle of her hair. He smoothed it away from her face. His fingertips brushed her cheek; the hip he had dashed against the floor; and, hesitantly, her tender breast. His hand might have lingered there; he forced it to fall. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning more than the simple words, the simple wounding. “I’m…most…sorry.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t be.” Her gentleness was worse than any scolding, her kiss more terrible than a blow, chaste on his stiff cheek. “Sleep now,” she said, “and forget. We all have our midnight madnesses.”

  “I—” His voice died. She began to walk away. The words fought free. “I love you, Thea.”

  She was gone. He sank down where she had left him, drawing into a knot, trembling deep within. So easily it had come out, so suddenly and so irredeemably. And she had not even stayed to hear.

  In a moment he would laugh. In a moment more, he would weep.

  12.

  Sophia closed her account book firmly and laid her pen aside. “No more today,” she said to the house steward. He bowed with Arab formality and withdrew.

  Once he was well gone, she indulged in a long delicious yawn and stretched until her bones cracked. Voices from outside came clearly to her ears as they had throughout the morning; she rose and sought the window.

  In the garden below, her guest and her children sat in a circle, three dark heads and Alf’s fair one. They all had pens, even Nikki, and writing tablets; when Alf spoke they wrote. Greek now. It had been Latin earlier.

  The cadences were familiar. Homer?

  Alf paused. The girls continued to write; he bent toward Nikki. From her vantage directly above them, she could see the tablet in her son’s lap. The scribbles on it looked remarkably like letters.

  Her fingers clenched on the window frame. No, she thought. They had all told her, doctors, priests, astrologers: he would never speak or read or write. “Raise him as you may,” the most learned of the doctors had told her in ill-concealed pity. “Train him as you would a puppy or a colt, else he will run wild. More than that, short of a miracle, none of us can do.”

  For a moment Alf’s hand guided Nikki’s. He drew back.

  Nikki paused, head cocked. Suddenly he nodded and bent over his tablet. If he had been any other child, and if any word had been spoken, she would have said that he had been instructed; had questioned and been answered; and had returned to his task with new understanding.

  She drew a breath to calm herself. She hoped for too much; it made her see only what she wished to see. What could one young Latin do, however brilliant he might be, where all the wise men of Byzantium had failed?

  In the garden Anna said, “There. All done. Now will you teach me a new song? You promised!”

  Though Alf’s voice was stern, Sophia could have sworn that there was a smile in it. “Patience is part of your lesson, demoiselle. Come, let me see if anything written in such haste can be perfect.”

  “It is,” Anna insisted. “Alf, what’s dem—demi—”

  “That means ‘young lady’ in Frankish,” Irene informed her virtuously, “and he’s being much more polite than you deserve.”

  “Every man owes a lady courtesy,” said Alf in a tone that so withered Irene’s pretensions that Sophia stifled laughter. “Yes, Anna, it seems that you’ve done the impossible. There’s not even an iota out of place. However—”

  It was Irene who cut him short. “Then you’ll sing for us? A new song, please.”

  “Ah,” he said. His voice had deepened a full octave. “A conspiracy. For that I should give you ten more lines apiece, to teach you how to treat your master.” As they burst into loud protests, he added, “But since we’ve already had our full hour and more, just this once I will yield to your impudence.”

  Even Nikki laid aside his tablet, leaning forward eagerly. Alf’s voice in song was at once deep and clear: like the rest of him, an uncanny mingling of potent maleness and almost feminine beauty.

  It caught Sophia and held her fast. She did not move when all too soon it fell silent, but stood by the window, gazing out with eyes that saw only sunlight.

  Someone came to stand beside her. “There doesn’t seem to be much he can’t do,” Bardas said.

  The rough familiar voice called her back to herself. She smiled and took his arm and walked with him out of the workroom. “It’s a bit of a scandal, you know. How can we allow a Latin—a boy—to teach our nubile young daughters? Are we positive that he’s only teaching them Latin and tutoring them in Greek, with a little music on the side?”

  “That sounds like my sister,” Bardas muttered.

  “Well, yes. Theodora was here yesterday. We visited the schoolroom.” Sophia’s eyes glinted. “Alfred, as usual, was infallibly polite. Theodora, as usual, completely failed
to captivate him with those famous eyes of hers. And she suggested that maybe we weren’t entirely wise to expose him to such temptation, with Irene growing so pretty, and he so young and evidently a man entire.”

  “‘Evidently,’” he said. “I like that.”

  They paused just past the door that led to the garden. Alf and the children were out of sight around a corner of the house, but they heard Anna’s tuneless treble and Irene’s sweet soprano rehearsing the song Alf had sung.

  “It’s obvious enough to me,” said Sophia, “but I think I’d trust him with any woman living. Except perhaps for one.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  She raised both. “Well? Have you ever seen anyone look at a woman the way he looks at Thea?”

  “It seems to me,” mused Bardas, “that I saw a boy or two mooning after you in your day. And you inveigled your father into marrying you off to an old man from Constantinople, purely and simply for his money.”

  She glared at him. “Money, forsooth! I had enough of my own. Good sense, that was what I admired in you. No fumbling, no foolishness. You knew what you wanted, and that was that.”

  “Two of a kind, weren’t we? Though as I recall, the first time I saw you, you were flat on your behind in a dungheap, roundly cursing the half-broken colt who’d thrown you there. I admired your vocabulary. And,” he added after some consideration, “Your trim ankle.”

  “You saw more than that, that day.” Sophia smiled, remembering. Bardas sat on a stone bench against the house wall where the sun was warm, drawing a breath, of contentment perhaps, that caught and broke into a spasm of coughing.

  Sophia sprang toward him, but he waved her away. His breathing had steadied; he leaned back. “Something in my throat,” he muttered.

  He said that every time. Often lately, since the fire. She looked hard at him. He seemed as strong as ever. A little thinner, maybe. A little greyer. He would be sixty on Saint Stephen’s Day.

  “It’s true,” he said in almost his normal voice, “those two children seem unduly interested in each other. Has anyone caught them at it yet?”