Call of the Kings (19 page)

Chapter 13

‘I think you are a god on earth.’

After due consideration on where to go for his first visit, Twilight gave in to a personal whim and decided upon the famous golden city-state of Constantinople. Founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 324 AD and chosen by him as the new Christian capital and nation, it soon became known as Byzantium and came second only to Rome in its ability to offer a blazing, battle-ridden history of momentous deeds and vainglorious imperators. Spread out behind its famous fortified land wall, some sixteen miles long and built by Theodosius over eight hundred years ago - a triple, impregnable line of towers and gates linked by thirty-foot thick hewn granite blocks against which many an invader’s hopes, and the lives of his attacking army, had expired - Constantinople was a city of ten million people. A moat, dark and deep as if filled with the blood of the many tens of thousands who had perished within it as they tried to storm its walls, ran all around the outside. Inside the wall the city was protected on its other sides by three separate seas. The Golden Horn estuary, Sea of Marmara, and the Bosphorus, all with differing and tricky winds and currents, contributed to the impregnability of its famous and magnificent ability to keep invaders out.

Twilight arrived early evening and decided to remain invisible until he had got the feel of the place. Like all big cities it had its share of beggars, street traders, and children vying with each other to attract the attention of any strangers. The balmy evening air was alive with their noise, and the many strong spices being sold assailed the nostrils with a delightful array of cardamom, marjoram, cinnamon, and ras-el-hanout blends. Everywhere stalls displayed their wares, with prominence given to jars of olive oil and many varieties of bread. Languages, most of them completely new to him, swirled and danced their unusual cadences around the teeming streets. Harsh, guttural throat sounds mingled with mid-range cries and shrill shrieks. Greeks, Bulgars, Slavs, Turks, Macedonians, Serbians, Cretans, Africans, Venetians, Italians, Jews, and Genoese, the pale, swarthy, and black mixtures of an international city with eight hundred years of trading, squabbling, loving, and living together. Nobility, zealots, vagabonds, soldiers, slaves, and mercenaries, a teeming metropolis of complex Mediterranean vassalage and freemen. They spat, fought, ran, piddled, strolled, shouted their wares, sang and, in one dark corner, a young man vomited loudly. Street girls began to emerge to parade and posture for early evening clients, dogs barked, someone banged a drum, lights grew brighter as the night closed in, and laughter and song swirled and boomed.

Choosing a gray, almost monk-like habit with a cut not unlike that being worn all around him, Twilight decided to become visible, walk with the crowds and breathe in the wonder of this magical place. Dodging a clattering handcart pulled by a young boy, he emerged into the mainstream hubbub and joined the teeming, jostling throng. A brightly painted woman in a blue silk dress crooked her finger at him suggestively as he walked by.

‘Old men are my specialty. I bring back their energy, their lost youth,’ she shouted in English at his back. He turned and gave her a smile and a small wave.

Old men, eh? He supposed that applied to him although he could, with the aid of the enchantments, look any age he desired. For now he would remain what he was, an old man of ninety-three. It would be interesting to see if this Byzantine society venerated, ignored, or castigated such a great age. Time would tell.

He stopped to watch a small, dark-skinned man wearing a white turban sitting cross-legged on the floor with a round straw basket with an open top between his legs. Staring into the basket the man placed a long pipe into his mouth and blew a soft, haunting tune on it. Slowly, forked tongue licking the air around its lips, the black, bulbous head of a cobra, one of the most deadly snakes in the world, emerged from the open basket. Waving sinuously to the haunting tune of the pipe, the cobra continued its climb until it was almost level with the end of the man’s pipe. The scene reminded Twilight of an event many years ago when, as a young thirteen-year-old, he journeyed with his father to the compound of the long magus and they had encountered an old, dirty hermit called Bovey and his serpent Anguis. Subsequently torn to pieces by Lupa, the fierce white wolf and guardian of Elelendise, Bovey and his serpent had contributed to the death of the loyal old cob Twilight, then going under his given name of Will Timms, and his father had been riding, by engaging in a macabre spectacle involving the snake climbing up the hermit’s stick and then thin, dirty body before disappearing into a tree.

He took a quick look at the inside of the cobra’s mouth. It was a male and as he had guessed its venom glands had been removed so that it could dance to the piping tune of its master without harming anyone with its bite. He took a quick look into its mind. Gloom, despair, imprisonment - a beautiful, proud, wild animal miserably locked into performing for humans for a miserly dead rodent to eat every two days. Tempted to do something about it, Twilight quickly moved on. If he put the snake back into its natural environment, it wouldn’t survive without venom and he wasn’t sure if he could recreate that.

For three days and nights Twilight walked around this great city. Staying invisible so that he could listen unhindered, he eavesdropped on conversations and meetings between the city elders, the clergy, merchants, military, tradesmen, importers and exporters, and the ordinary man and woman in the street. He left the ruling elite - the patriarch and his immediate prelates who served as head of the church, and the emperor and his close circle of senators - until later. When he understood more, he would have face-to-face meetings with them.

One thing soon became apparent. This was a Christian city through and through, and although other faiths were allowed to worship unhindered, the vast majority of the inhabitants were devout followers of Christianity and wanted to remain that way. Any non-Christian attempt to take the city would be repelled with all their might. Christian inhabitancy of Jerusalem didn’t seem to bother them; this was their Jerusalem, and woe betides the Ottoman infidel if he tried to take this city. He’d get the same treatment as in times past.

One thing he would say about Christianity, a fact he’d also noticed in Rome, was the magnificent buildings they erected to conduct their faith. The churches of Constantinople, especially the famed Basilica of St. Sophia with its huge, levitated dome and four acres of gold mosaic decorating the vaulting of its cavernous, marbled altar room, seemed to shine out with an all-encompassing munificence. A faith surely benefits from such extraordinary structures and their jewelled and gilded reliquary and magnificent statues to the great and the good of its past. It would be interesting to compare this with the Muslim buildings of worship, which, due to their more migratory desert and mountain background, he suspected would be less ostentatious.

Keeping a wary eye out for venefical auras, Twilight was disappointed not to find a single one, not even a small example like that of his new hermit friend Odo in Rome. A good venefical presence would have been a great help to him, not to mention the city itself.

On the evening of the third day he was sitting on a collection of stones on the side of the Forum of Constantine, a large square leading to the Basilica of St. Sophia, when his eye was caught by four young men having an urgent whispered conversation on the other side. Heads together they pointed their fingers and nodded. Their ringleader, a muscular young man with curly hair, stood at their centre and pointed at each of the other three in turn. Their body language was furtive, with frequent glances over their shoulders. They were up to something so Twilight decided to listen.

‘ . . . turns that corner out of the square, Giacomo, I want you to grab him from behind and clap both arms to his side.’ He pointed to the far side of the square. ‘Then you, Angelo, put this cloth bag over his head. Make sure you come from behind so he can’t see you. As soon as the bag is over his head, Diedo and I will go through his clothing and get the jewels. Probably in a leather drawstring bag around his neck. If he struggles or makes a big fuss, Diedo and I will shut him up. Then we all scatter and meet later at Angelo’s house. Okay?’

They all nodded.

‘Get in position, he’ll be here soon.’

They spread out and walked toward the far corner. There weren’t many people about, and the corner they were heading for was in darkness.

A few minutes later a small man wearing a Jewish skullcap and a long gray and black robe hurried across the centre of the square toward the corner. The four young men, affecting a casual air, began to close on him until the one called Giacomo suddenly stepped behind him and clamped his arms. The Jew, a thin man without any noticeable strength, cried out, a cry that was quickly muffled as the one called Angelo pulled the cloth bag over his head from behind. Then the muscular leader and the one called Diedo moved in to search the struggling little Jew.

And all four of the young men were suddenly frozen.

As the Jew felt the hands clamping his arms drop away, he tore off the cloth bag. The four young men were standing around him like statues. Transfixed eyes still ablaze with the purposefulness of the robbery, they were caught in mid-move, immobile hands reaching toward their quarry joined to fixed bodies taut with stilled aggression.

Standing in the middle of this fixed pantomime the little Jew, still holding the cloth bag, stared around in stupefaction.

‘I am a friend and come in peace,’ Twilight said, walking toward him with a smile of welcome on his face. ‘They will not harm you now.’

Stepping out of the frozen circle, the little Jew swallowed hard as he regained some of his composure. He pointed a shaking finger at the four young men.

‘You did that?’

‘I did. They were going to rob you.’

‘Then, sir, I am in your debt and thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

The old astounder chuckled as he walked around the four frozen young men. A few people were beginning to stop and point at the spectacle. Tapping all four on the head in quick succession, Twilight brought them back to the present. Staring wildly around them for a moment or two, the four young men then quickly took off across the square as fast as their legs would carry them. Before they disappeared into the labyrinthine streets and passages of the city, Twilight spoke in Hebrew.

‘They won’t bother you again . . . ever.’

The little Jew shook his head in wonder.

‘Are you Jewish, some sort of god?’

‘I am a veneficus from a faraway land.’

The Jew stroked his chin. ‘I know this Latin word veneficus, it means ‘sorcerer, magician.’ And the faraway land. Where, pray, is that?’

‘Britain, sometimes known as Albion.’

‘I have heard of this place also. It is a hostile land inhabited by barbarians. Now, sir, I would take it as an honour if you would accompany me to my house in the Jewish Quarter to break bread. There is much I would like to know, many questions to ask. My name is Silas.’

‘It would be a pleasure to sit with you, Silas, although venefici don’t eat or drink. I am Twilight and I, too, have a lot of questions.’

Later that evening they sat in Silas’s little house in the Jewish Quarter near the Horaia Gate on the Horn. He had introduced Twilight to his wife, another small person, whose name was Ahinoam. Named, Silas had said proudly, presenting his birdlike little lady, after the wife of the great Jewish king, David. They had no children and Silas was a jeweller who traded precious stones daily from a small platform in the jewellery district. It was his stock of precious stones, kept in a leather pouch around his neck and always with him, that the four young men had been after.

‘Constantinople is lawless and full of young libertines now,’ said Silas. ‘That is the third time I have been attacked on my way home. Greeks, Catalans, Italians, Venetians, all are allowed to roam free and rob as they please, especially us Jews.’

‘Why Jews especially?’

‘This is a Christian city, and whilst we Jews are tolerated, because of the perceived role we had in the crucifixion of their Jesus, we will never be fully accepted by them. It is the same in many other Christian enclaves yet does not take any account of history.’

‘Such as Jerusalem?’

‘Jerusalem is different. We Jews also have a strong claim upon that place, but we are squeezed between the two big powers of Saracens and Christians.’

‘That is why I’m here,’ said Twilight, who then proceeded to tell him about his mission. When he’d finished Silas was silent for a long time.

‘My brother lives in Jerusalem,’ he said eventually. ‘He is wise in such matters and also deals in precious stones. I’ll give you his address before you leave. Perhaps you could look him up when you are there.’

The two of them talked long into the night. Ahinoam, weary of trying to stifle her yawns, which grew longer and wider by the hour, finally went to her pallet. Silas was a wise and perceptive man who had read well, travelled widely, and pondered deeply upon many of the big questions. As soon as Ahinoam had gone to bed, and understanding that Twilight had a universal command of languages, Silas lapsed into Hebrew. The story he was about to tell, what he called the ‘Epic Journeys of the Jews,’ deserved the ringing tones of its own tongue. For the next two hours he talked with hardly any interruption from the old astounder. He began with the time of Gilgamesh three thousand years ago followed by Avraham’s journey to Canaan and the Children of Israel’s arrival in Egypt. Enslaved by Seti I, their escape under Moshe and retaking of Canaan led by Joshua brought a particular sparkle to his eyes. King David, the United Kingdom of Israel, and the establishment of Jerusalem as their capital two thousand years ago came next. Solomon and his Temple, Ahab, Jezebel, Amos and Isaiah, the taking of Israel by the Assyrian king Sargon II, and the deportation of the ten tribes. The establishment of the pagan cults in the Temple by Manasseh, Josiah and his attempt at reform and Jeremiah’s prophesies. The seminal moment when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, levelled the Temple, and deported Jews to Babylon. Fifteen hundred years ago Cyrus, king of the Persians, enters Babylon, returns the sacred relics carried off to Babylon, and proclaims the Edict of Cyrus allowing the exiled Jews to return to the Promised Land. The Song of Songs and the Psalms are written, it is the time of Ruth and Job, and the second Temple is built.