Lord of Slaughter

8

Loys strode back to his lodgings, along one of the top streets to avoid the crush caused by the incoming army. The bulge where he’d hidden the gold inside his tunic seemed as conspicuous as if he’d stuffed a live goat up there, but he had no choice other than to take the back way.

With the return of the army the whole city was in ferment, more even than normal, so he didn’t draw particular attention to himself by the briskness of his pace, which broke into a run at points where he felt particularly threatened.

The weather did nothing to settle him. The sky was strange — a curious and delicate shade of yellow had come over it while he had been with the chamberlain and the sun seemed wrapped in gauze. The light was like dusk and it wasn’t yet past noon.

He hurried through the backstreets. There were no tall porches here, no merchants selling gold and silk. Constantinople was shot with bright avenues straight as flower stems that bloomed into rich corollas of forums and squares. Here was the tangled mass of alleys that supported them: narrow, winding and — even on brighter days than this one — dim. The backstreets were the province of street hawkers, gangs of hungry-eyed youths who loitered full of simmering intent, unwashed women and drunken men. They sold leather on the Middle Way. Here, flea-raw children scuttled in the gutters, picking up animal dung or even dead dogs to sell to the tanneries beyond the walls. Better-fed and more pious people crossed themselves and prayed or hurried to chapels and churches. The odd sky, combined with the cold, had set men’s nerves jangling and they went to confess their sins and pray.

He calmed himself. Look at it with other eyes, Loys. There was a man, clearly a doctor in a good saffron gown, walking along. Three priests hurried on through the gloom, children and adults pulling at the holy men’s hands as they walked, asking for blessings to protect them on this strange day. The Numeri — soldiers from the city’s permanent garrison, so called because they were the ones who brought prisoners to the Numera — were a reassuring presence, idling on a corner. Mind you, they seemed more intent on looking up at the sky than guarding the streets.

Normally he would have enjoyed the mild frisson of danger the backstreets offered but, laden with the chamberlain’s gold and frightened by the task he had been set, he felt vulnerable and conspicuous.

Loys forced himself to walk more slowly. His fear was nothing to do with the sky or even with the gold he was carrying. It was fear of what the chamberlain had asked him to do — to create a working and efficacious spell in three months. Was it possible? He had no idea. Was it holy? No.

He would find Beatrice and get out of Constantinople immediately. Ships sailed every day for the north or down to Arabia. The Caliphate was a centre of learning and might welcome a man of his skills. He would not defy God for the chamberlain or for anyone.

He cut up past the huge brick building of the Cistern of Aetios, a source of drinking water for much of the city, skirting its olive gardens — whose trees enjoyed the emperor’s protection — and towards his lodgings.

He dived into the even narrower streets of the lighthouse quarter.

They were curiously empty. People were inside, with the shutters drawn. He looked up to the sky. The yellow was deepening and darkening, the sun becoming a blur. Something between light rain and snow wet the street. He shivered, and not just with the cold. The sky was unnatural, he was sure.

He went into the building that housed his rooms, up the gloomy wooden passage and stairs. When he got to the top he had to feel his way, the light was so bad.

‘Beatrice, Bea?’

No reply. He felt for the door and knocked at it, knowing it would be locked from the inside. Silence. He pushed at the door and it fell open.

The light of the gloomy day cast a feeble glow through the open window. The room was freezing. Beatrice was not there, nor any of their possessions. In rising panic Loys ran forward into the separate chamber set aside for his wife. That too was empty.

He came back out into the main bedroom. There was the mattress on the bed, the chamber pot and the small table which bore a blob of red wax. They had not been able to afford wax candles. He went to it. It was marked with a seal. He picked up the table and carried it to the window. The wax bore a crescent and a star and some words he couldn’t make out in Latin.

Loys put his hand on the window ledge. The crescent and the star was the sign of the city and so of the emperor and chamberlain. In one way he was relieved. She’d neither left him nor been taken by her father. But now he knew the master of the Magnaura had spoken truly when he’d said he belonged to the chamberlain.

The sky had darkened even further and great black clouds loomed over the sea, the sun gilding their edges with fire, plumes of inky black backed by burning gold like monstrous cinders. They turned the sea to a field of shining tar and cast a stark blue light on the harbour front.

A dread was inside him. This weather was not natural — it couldn’t be, the stamp of sorcery was all over it. And rather than fleeing, rather than taking Bea and running from it, he was expected to investigate. Looking at that sky, he could believe the demons had come to meet him.

He held his hand out of the window. Dirty snow fell upon it. He put his fingers to his mouth and licked at them. They had a fine grit in them and tasted of ash.

He’d seen a play in the marketplace, the mouth of hell gaping, hungry for sinners to fall into it. Some trickery had allowed smoke to belch out of the gaping maw. Was this it? Were the gates of hell open, smoking and stinking of cinders? Had the day of judgement come?

Words from the Revelation of St John came to him: ‘And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.’

There had been a comet only days before. Was that the censer?

Then his speculation fell in on itself and he thought only of her.

‘Beatrice!’ he said.

He thumped down the stairs and ran back to the palace.