City of God Read online

  City of God

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Map of the Eastern Mediterranean

  Map of Constantinople

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The Great Venture

  Chapter 2: The Broken Island

  Chapter 3: The Bitter Templar

  Chapter 4: The Perilous Journey

  Chapter 5: The Beleaguered Emperor

  Chapter 6: The Venetian Fleet

  Chapter 7: The First Blood

  Chapter 8: The Last Tower

  Chapter 9: The Unholy Siege

  Chapter 10: The Imperial Army

  Chapter 11: The Blind Fool

  Chapter 12: The Blood Money

  Chapter 13: The Victorious Franks

  Chapter 14: The Angry City

  Chapter 15: The Line Drawn

  Chapter 16: The Kindled Flame

  Chapter 17: The Byzantine Reaction

  Chapter 18: The Emperor’s Valour

  Chapter 19: The Great Siege

  Chapter 20: The Venetian Fury

  Chapter 21: The World’s End

  Chapter 22: Byzantium’s Fall

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Copyright

  ‘…the dirge and the cry of woe and the weeping drowned out the joyous paschal hymns. While the faithful chanted of the emptying of the tombs, of the overthrow of Hades and the raising up of the dead, the cities, one and all, sank beneath the deep of the earth into the gloomy and frightful abodes of Hades. What mortal could shed enough tears and adequately mourn the abductions, the pillaging, the casting of infants into the crossroads, and the running through of the aged with the sword.’

  Niketas Choniates, O City of Byzantium

  The timbers shook under repeated blows. Arnau de Vallbona cringed as the great wooden portal thudded into his shoulder, dust scattering down from the archway above in a choking cloud. He could hear the shouts outside; no words were audible – just tones of anger and violence.

  With a heart-stopping crack, the shining steel curve of an axe blade appeared through the timbers mere inches from Arnau’s face. Splinters of wood flew in a dozen directions, one drawing blood from the young Templar’s nose as it passed. Even in the midst of this terrible fray, he found the time to say a quick prayer in thanks that only his nose had been blooded. Many a knight had lost an eye or more to the splinters of a lance, after all. A bloody nose was nothing.

  The door shook again. He looked up instinctively. The white surcoat, emblazoned with the crimson cross of the order, was visible on the far side of the gatehouse. Ramon, a shining pure-white beacon amid the dun and grey of the local men-at-arms, shook his head with a grim expression. The gate was lost. It was only a matter of time.

  An arrow thrummed through one of the many small holes that had already been smashed through the gate, taking a swarthy spearman in the throat and hurling him back to the cobbles to cough and gurgle out his last moments. Arnau paid him no more heed than any of the other poor victims of this terrible fight. He had boundless sympathy for these people, yet even that had been stretched with the chaos, death and disaster all around them.

  ‘The gate is falling,’ his fellow knight shouted across the rattle of local tongues, somewhat unnecessarily. Anyone could see now that the gate was done for – certainly the young Templar with the bloody nose.

  Before they could do anything more, there was a dreadful crack, and the huge, heavy beam that now constituted the last obstacle gave a little, the iron loops in which it sat coming away from the door with a metallic shriek. The entire gate scraped inwards by a foot, a gap opening in the middle. Arnau could see them outside now – hungry and afire with the desire to kill and maim. He had seen those looks in another such desperate defence, at Rourell half a decade ago. These men would not be satisfied with anything less than grand slaughter and total victory.

  Arnau lurched back as the gate groaned inwards, and a pike thrust through the gap from without tore through the surcoat at his shoulder, taking wisps of material with it and grating across the chain shirt beneath. This second close call in as many heartbeats drew another prayer of thanks from the young Templar even as he brought his mace down and smashed the head from the pike in the press. Beside him, a man in a gleaming scale shirt suddenly jerked upright, arms thrust into the air and weapons forgotten as a spear slammed into the gap beneath his arms, impaling organs and robbing him of life.

  Another thud.

  The gate groaned inwards a few more inches. Now grasping arms and jabbing weapons were reaching through the gap, hungry for flesh. Mere moments remained.

  Regretting he could do no more, and noting a similar look in his brother’s eyes, Arnau de Vallbona withdrew from the defence of the gate, ducking an arrow and backing away.

  It was not his fight – had never been his fight – yet leaving it felt like the worst of betrayals.

  How in the name of God had it come to this?

  Arnau ran.

  Chapter 1: The Great Venture

  Levantine Sea

  Late November 1202

  Arnau heard the call from the deck and nudged Ramon.

  ‘Land, Brother. Must be Cyprus.’

  Would that it were Outremer – the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem.

  ‘If they’ve only just spotted it then I’ve got a good ten minutes yet,’ murmured the older knight as he turned over and buried his head in his blankets. Arnau gave him a fond smile and left him, hurrying over to the ladder to clamber up onto deck. Ramon deserved his sleep. His squire had turned out to be one of the most perpetually seasick men Arnau had ever come across, and the older knight had spent much of every night on board performing both his squire’s tasks and his own, as well as playing nurse to the young man. Let him sleep a little longer if he could.

  Arnau emerged into the bright afternoon light. His first image of the day was of young Sebastian leaning over the rail, clutching his small wooden icon of the Virgin tight enough to make his hand bleed and retching over the side, sounding like a hungry gull. The poor lad was so thin after weeks of this that he looked like a skeleton in black rags rather than a warrior of God. Since Mateu’s death four years ago in the Rourell siege, Ramon had been adamant that he would live without a squire, but his resolve had eventually crumbled under the disapproval of the preceptrix. The rule of the order assigned every knight a squire, after all. Among the pilgrims who had come to Rourell to revere the arm of Saint Stephen that Arnau and Balthesar had recovered during their weird, dangerous and clandestine time on Mallorca two years earlier, Sebastian had arrived with a sick and frail mother who had died before she could even leave the preceptory. The boy had been lost, and like some benevolent grandsire Ramon had taken the boy on. His father had died in some conflict between the Byzantines and the Bulgars a few years earlier and left him the icon to which he clung as though his very life depended upon it. Perhaps the loss of his father and mother had formed some part of the reason he had been so ready to accept the Church of Rome in defiance of his upbringing.

  Likely Sebastian was currently regretting it with every heave of his guts. Of course, the ship had bucked and rolled more than Arnau had expected. He’d questioned one of the sailors, who had shrugged and muttered something about winter currents, eddies and coastal circulations. He turned from the sight of the young man just as he heaved his next empty gutload over the rail.

  Arnau smiled again. Just this summer, he had taken the vows of a full brother with the blessings of his peers, and had become a true knight of the Temple, discarding his black sergeant’s robes for the white surcoat of a knight. Oddly, it had not felt much different. It was made abundantly clear that he was still a junior member of the preceptory. He would always be ex
pected to defer to a more experienced brother, and so with respect to his relationship with Ramon, little had changed other than the colour of his clothes. Moreover, he had not yet been allocated a squire from the recent influx of manpower, though that might not be a bad thing. He had been the first to admit that most of the youths who had come were unlikely to make a good companion for a knight.

  He sighed and tried to reflect on the future, though the past insisted on popping up far too easily.

  Cyprus lay ahead, and he could see the grey shape of the island now in the centre of the blue swell. Cyprus. His first ever Eastern land. In fact, his first ever non-Iberian land. Oh, he had travelled across the border into French Catalonia once or twice, but his life had been firmly rooted in the dry brown soil of Iberia.

  Then the Pope’s call had come.

  Balthesar had known it was coming. He’d said as much to Arnau, but with settling back into life at Rourell after their return, and with the turning of the seasons, the young Templar had begun to think his friend mistaken, that the Pope was more concerned with keeping his divine rule clear of the interference of secular princes. Then, not long after he had taken the white mantle, it had begun. The Pope had called for all good knights of Christendom to join the holy war and attack Egypt, the heart of all Saracen power.

  The call had received a lukewarm reception from the warring kings of Europe, some of whom vied with the papacy in legal and regnal matters, and others who hated one another more than any Saracen to the extent that they would refuse to march to war alongside them.

  In the end it had been largely the Franks and Burgundians who heeded the call, with the city state of Venice putting forward their powerful navy as transport, albeit at a high price. Other than them and a few smaller contingents who had thrown in their lot with the Pope’s forces, the order had pledged its sword arm to the cause.

  Arnau had listened with excitement and trepidation as the news was relayed by the preceptrix. The stronger houses in Iberia were to send men, and since Rourell had begun to grow, they were expected to do their part. Ramon had been the natural choice as senior knight, and despite both desiring and fearing selection, Arnau had almost exploded with pride when he was selected to accompany the older brother. In truth, few men of Iberia became involved in the end. Preceptors argued against sending their men. Who wanted to go and fight for the control of some fabled Eastern city when that same enemy lived but miles to the south, threatening everyday life?

  Still, Arnau sailed east with Ramon and his squire at the behest of preceptrix Ermengarda. The two knights and the young squire had called in at several French and Italian ports, passed a couple of days on Sicily, and then spent nights anchored off several insignificant Greek islands. But they had not made true landfall in the East yet. Cyprus would be it.

  He crossed to Sebastian as the lad wiped the sick from his mouth and shivered.

  ‘Nearly done,’ he smiled. ‘And from what I understand we’ll be in Cyprus for some time. Something to do with eddies and unfavourable currents.’ The young squire turned miserable eyes on him, and Arnau sighed. ‘Voítheia krasioú?’ he tried in halted Greek. The squire immediately turned and heaved over the side again.

  ‘All right, no wine, then,’ Arnau smiled.

  His Greek was coming on in leaps and bounds, which was testament perhaps to the fact that Sebastian would have made a far better tutor than squire. Some arcane path had brought the boy and his mother to the door of Rourell, and their French-accented Aragonese had been so good no one could have guessed their origin. It was only after his mother’s death they had learned that he hailed originally from the East, in the lands of the empire with their mysterious Greek Church, and had spoken the Western tongues only for a year or two.

  Cyprus. The first step in the great adventure.

  They were to rendezvous in Acre with the grand master of the order, there to join the crusading force that would head south for Egypt and the centre of Saladin’s power. The moment they had known they were coming east, Arnau had started working with Sebastian on learning the Greek tongue. It was certainly a sight easier than Arabic, and he was managing to master more than just the basics now. He’d never know more than a few phrases of Arabic, but he felt he might one day command Greek well. Only the spoken language, of course. The alphabet was still anathema to him.

  It irked him more than a little that he had been learning Greek for five months since the call first came, while Ramon had only begun during the voyage, yet the elder knight was already Arnau’s equal in the tongue. It might not be of use in the end, of course – their destination was Acre in the Holy Land, and the Crusade as a whole was bound for Egypt. Aramaic and Arabic would be the languages they would encounter. But Greek was the closest geographically, being an Eastern tongue, and it would at least serve them on Cyprus, where the captain had warned them that the winter weather might well keep them for several months.

  He strode over to the captain, chest puffed out, still proud of his new white garment with the red cross upon the breast. The man, a Genovese with a bad attitude and a sour face, nodded as he approached.

  ‘Brother.’

  ‘This is Cyprus, then?’

  ‘Aye, sir knight. That’s Limassol, largest port of the western shore. Don’t say yes to anyone there, or you’ll go home a hundred coins poorer but with a sack of fish. They’re thieves and vagabonds, the lot of them.’

  Arnau nodded as though he agreed. As a Latin captain, the man had the usual disdain for the Greeks with their own alphabet and their schismatic Church. Arnau had argued the first few times, but the man clearly had no interest in reason or logic, so he’d given up.

  ‘My first Greek land,’ he smiled.

  ‘Cyprus ain’t Greek, sir knight,’ the captain said, a sneer creeping in accidentally.

  ‘But it is.’

  ‘No, it was lost to Byzantium decades ago. It’s a good God-fearing land now. You should know that. Your order owned it for a year.’

  Arnau nodded vaguely. He’d heard as much, but Ramon knew nothing of the island, and Arnau had been able to unpick little more than that simple fact.

  ‘Soon, though, we will head east and join the Crusade.’

  He smiled. The idea of being one of God’s gauntlets in smashing the Saracen and recovering the Holy City was seductive. The crusading army, called by the Pope, mostly manned by Franks and transported by Venetian ships, aimed to smash the power of the caliph and free the Holy Land. The three Templars would join their brethren at the mother house in Acre and then combine with the western force when it got that far.

  Of course, it was almost winter now. No real war against the Saracen would begin until spring, but it was still an enticing prospect for Arnau. He glanced sideways at the captain again. The Genovese seemed to think that sailing in the great central sea was almost done for the year. Ramon intended to be in Acre for the winter, but if the captain was correct, then they would likely wait the bad season out in Cyprus.

  Arnau moved to the bow of the heavy merchant ship where salty sailors were busy using their unfathomable nautical language and telling horrendous, off-colour jokes. Cyprus slid towards them.

  ‘This is Limassol?’ he checked with one of the nearest sailors, pointing at the approaching shoreline.

  ‘Aye that’s the one, masser knight,’ the Sicilian sailor replied in heavily accented Aragonese.

  ‘Is it the capital of the island?’

  ‘No, that would be Lefkosia.’

  Arnau frowned. ‘Why aren’t we landing there, then?’

  ‘Because we’re a ship and not a fucking eagle, masser knight. Lefkosia’s inland.’

  Arnau nodded, filled with chagrin, and watched as the island slid ever closer.

  Limassol seemed to be a thriving and upcoming port. Having been a coastal dweller throughout his life, Arnau could spot a port on the decline and a port on the rise. Limassol was most definitely among the latter. Ships from half a dozen nations sat wallowing at the jetties an
d the entire port swarmed with men hard at work, both sailors and islanders. Arnau decided immediately that what time he had on Cyprus was at least going to be interesting.

  He saw Sebastian looking up now, taking a pained and grey-faced interest in their destination. The young man apparently hailed from somewhere called Adrianople in the north of that strange Eastern empire of Byzantium, and consequently Cyprus was probably as alien to him as it was to the other visitors. The ship slid slowly into the harbour, swaying gently until it entered the welcoming arms of the sea walls, where the water’s surface became glassy calm.

  As they made their final approach to the jetty, the sailors rushing hither and thither and shouting in preparation to dock, Ramon finally appeared through the hatch, clambering up onto deck, kit bag over his shoulder.

  ‘Limassol?’ he asked, crossing to join Arnau.

  ‘Yes, apparently the capital is inland. Where do we go from here?’

  ‘We’ll have to present ourselves at the court in Lefkosia, given that there are no longer any Temple holdings on the island. It’s quite a way, from what one of the sailors told me. Probably best to stay in Limassol tonight and then set off early in the morning, since we’ll be riding all day. Besides, Sebastian could do with a night to recover before we inflict a horse ride upon the poor lad.’

  Arnau nodded. He was still a little unsure as to Cyprus’s place in the world, and would defer naturally to Ramon’s confident leadership. The island had been part of the Byzantine world until relatively recently. It had been held briefly by the charismatic and bloodthirsty King Richard of England during the time of the last Crusade. It had been given to the Order of the Temple less than a decade ago, but the Order had controlled the island for less than a year before it passed into the hands of the powerful crusading de Lusignan family. A troubled and complex recent history for the island, then.

  He was still pondering on the place as the ship touched the boards of the jetty and all aboard lurched for a moment as it came to a halt. Cries went out and ropes were hurled and tied. Sailors began to run out the boarding ramp and bring up onto deck the manifest and other documents for their captain as well as their passengers’ belongings. The three Templars’ horses were led up onto the brine-coated timbers and then slowly and carefully down the ramp to the jetty.