‘Not so dangerous as when we came here,’ I said. ‘You have saved our lives today, and I will not forget it.’
The merchant sat down opposite me, the chair creaking under his weight. ‘In truth, my friend, I do not do this because of my love for your people, though I bear them no grudges.’ He peered nervously behind him, where I could see the dim figure of Sigurd sleeping on a bench. ‘The Emperor’s blockade has all but ruined me, while every day from my window I see the ships of my rivals unloading across the bay.’
‘If I reach the palace alive,’ I told him, ‘and if there is a single man in the palace who will listen to me, you will have the grandest mansion which stands in the shadow of the old acropolis.’
‘I hope so, my friend. I hope so. My father in Pisa will be unhappy if I return a beggar.’
We sat there in silence and darkness a few moments, the only sound Sigurd snoring in his corner.
‘Tell me what else you know of Baldwin,’ I said. I was too alert to sleep again, and Domenico was not so well known to me that silences were comfortable.
He shrugged, sucking on a dried fig. ‘Little things, pieces of gossip and hearsay. He has brought his wife and children — did you know that?’
‘I did not,’ I admitted. ‘Does our climate agree with their health?’
Domenico chuckled. ‘It will do, when they are queen and princes in his new kingdom.’
‘He has no lands in the west? In Frankia?’ It was half a question, half a statement, for I remembered the Count Hugh taunting him to such effect in his tent.
‘None. His father was a count, and his mother heir to a duchy, but he was the third son and so got neither. According to rumour, they intended him for the church, but you have seen the temper of his soul. I do not think he was long in the great cathedral school at Rheims. After that. .’
Domenico was never a man to diminish a tale which could be expanded, but he broke off in confusion at my shout of astonishment.
‘Rheims? Baldwin was at Rheims? The barbarian town, where they keep the shrine of their Saint Remigius?’
‘I believe so.’ Domenico was looking up at me in alarm, while behind him Sigurd stirred from his sleep. ‘I have never been there. Why?’
‘Because the monk was at Rheims — that was where he joined his order, and was turned against the Romans. Where Baldwin must have found him.’ I remembered the monk’s brother describing his cruelty. ‘I imagine they found much in common. So when Baldwin came east, and needed a man who could pass for a Roman yet had the barbarian faith in his heart, he chose the monk, Odo.’
Domenico watched me in puzzlement. ‘You believe this monk — the man who once approached me to fund his scheming — is Baldwin’s assassin.’
‘I do. You said he had brought his wife and children, that he wanted to claim a kingdom in the east because he had none in the west. What richer prize than Byzantium itself?’
Much of this I had suspected, or believed, but finally to have a definite connection between Baldwin and the monk made me course with triumph. Though there was no triumph yet, I reminded myself, while the monk walked free and the barbarians were in arms.
‘We must go and tell the Emperor,’ I said.
Domenico edged open the door. It must have been as dark outside as within, for it admitted no light.
‘We can go,’ he announced.
‘Then we had better move quickly.’
Armed with long knives which Domenico gave us, we hurried out of his courtyard and down the hill. His house was unscathed, but barely fifty yards away the devastation began. You could almost see where the crowd had stopped, the high-water mark of their destructive flood: one moment the houses we passed were intact and unharmed, the next they were roofless ruins, their doors beaten from their hinges and every window shattered. Smoke filled the air, the acrid fumes of human misery, and I had to hold my sleeve over my face to keep from choking. Domenico had spoken of a mob, but there must have been a method to their savagery for not a single building had been bypassed or forgotten. Even now, the dull wind brought more shouts of havoc and spoliation to my ears.
I shivered. ‘The Lord God help us if they get inside the city. He Himself could not have visited greater destruction here.’
We descended lower, Domenico leading us uncertainly through smouldering streets and rubble-strewn alleys. We saw no-one, living or dying, and fear whetted our ears such that we were quick to hear if any approached. Several times we crouched in the ruins until we were sure that danger had passed, and our progress was fitful until at last the slope tailed away onto the flat ground by the shore. We came onto a broad street — the same, I realised, that we had trodden that morning. We had felt strong then, invulnerable, but how many from that column were alive now?
Domenico scuttled across the road, into the shadow of a warehouse, and beckoned us after him. It had probably been empty even before the looters reached it, and though it was scorched black, the new bricks of its walls had saved it from the worst effects of the flames. Its door had not been so fortunate, but that was to our advantage as we followed Domenico under the charred lintel.
He swept an arm about him in melancholy. ‘Once, this was to be the cradle of my fortune; now it is its tomb. But in this week of all weeks, we should remember that salvation also can come from the grave. Help me raise the floor.’
We crouched on our knees, and pressed our fingers into a groove where he directed. When we tugged, a broad square of planking came up in our hands, opening a shallow pit to our view. On the packed earth within lay a small boat.
‘The wise merchant guards against every risk,’ said Domenico proudly. ‘And thus never loses everything.’
‘If you can get us across the Horn, you will gain a great deal more.’
We bent over the hole and lifted out the boat by its prow. I was glad of Sigurd’s strength, for Domenico did little but fuss: together we managed to haul the craft across to the door by the wharf. The hull rasped and grated horribly as we dragged it over the floor, the noise redoubled by the towering walls, but the barbarians must have exhausted their appetite for plunder, or indulged it elsewhere, for none came to trouble us.
With a final push, Sigurd heaved the boat over the edge of the wharf and watched it splash into the black waters of the Horn. There was a ladder bolted to one of the pilings which even the Franks had not bothered to destroy: we slid down it, and soon we were splashing away from the dock, away from danger, away from the horror that had once been Galata. Though looking across to the far side of the Horn was no comfort, for by some unknown devilry there seemed to be flames there as well. I lay back against the thwart and stared at the sky, floating between the shores of a world on fire.
26
It was like some vision of the apocalypse, for around the entire sweep of the bay flames licked into the night. In Galata they were burning out, dying slowly, but along the coast the barbarian’s progress could be measured by the heights to which the fires still rose in every village and settlement. To my horror, they did not stop at the bridge, but continued back along the southern shore even into the city itself. I stared out through the darkness, trying to judge if any were near my own home, but it was hidden in the hills. Where were the barbarians now? Had they entered the city, as Baldwin had promised they would, as the flames seemed to herald? Was the empire betrayed into slavery? I wanted to weep, but tears would not come. The last time there had been violence in the city I had spent three days and nights at my door, sword in hand, refusing to sleep lest the mob come for my family. There would be no consolation if I had failed them now.
Sigurd made a crude boatman, but he managed to bring us across the Horn, between the moored ships, and towards the walls. They were clear to see, for on that night even the waves burned: sea-fire had been spread over them, to deter all who might approach and illuminate any who did. I could smell the oily smoke, hear the spitting as the flames danced and swayed on the water.
