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Authors: Alan Gordon

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“There are private places to be found in this city.”
“There are indeed. You know the Cistern of the Columns?”
“Off the Mese near the Hippodrome.”
“Exactly. Meet me inside at sunset, and you will be satisfied.”
I bowed and stepped carefully the rest of the way back to the door.
 
“It's a trap,” said Plossus when I told him about it at luncheon.
“Probably,” I said. “But the fact that he's willing to set one means there's something he's trying to hide. He must think that we know more than we do.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Plossus.
“Go on ahead. Find a good observation spot, and make sure that he goes in alone. I'll pass by toward sunset. If there's anything amiss, signal me. If anyone goes in after me, he's yours.”
“But what if he plans to take you by himself?”
“Let him try,” I said.
He paused and turned as he reached the doorway.
“I thought you promised your wife you wouldn't be getting into any more of these situations,” he said.
“I promised her I wouldn't go across the enemy lines,” I said. “But this is taking place at home.”
“Dead is dead, wherever it happens,” said Plossus. “See you there.”
As the sun began to set, I walked from the Forum of Constantine to the neighborhood north of the Hippodrome. Under my cloak I held
a small lantern with three sides blocked so that the light from the candle within shone in only one direction. I also had an unlit torch thrust into my belt, and the usual deadly precautions within easy reach.
The entrance to the cistern was at one end of a small square. As I approached it, Plossus passed me, dressed in everyday garb, and muttered, “Ranieri went in a little while ago, alone. I haven't seen anyone else go through the entrance all day.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The cistern was underground and filled from pipes that ran from some source I did not know. They say it dated from the time of the Emperor Justinian, which was why it was in the oldest part of the city. When it was full, it provided water to drink and douse fires during times of siege. But it had not been filled yet, another of the Emperor's oversights in planning.
It was a popular site for travelers. Even the locals did not weary of descending the steps from the small building that marked the entrance. You emerged in a sculpted cavern with hundreds of columns, supporting arches and brick ceilings some thirty feet up. The columns were in regular rows, rising from ornately carved bases. To think, all that elaborate decoration in an underground vault that was meant to be flooded.
There was still about a foot of water present, and when I lit my torch, the light bounced off the ripples and played across the ceiling. I sloshed slowly through the cistern, listening for any sign of another living soul. It was a beautiful place, but every column could conceal an attacker, so beauty was the last thing on my mind.
“Fool,” called Ranieri softly from my right.
I turned, and he stepped out from behind a column a hundred feet away, holding a lit candle. Though he had whispered, the echoes sent the sound bouncing to my ears as if he was standing next to me. I started in his direction, but he held up his hand.
“I can only trust at a distance,” he said. “Especially now.”
“Fair enough,” I replied.
“You have questions, I believe,” he said.
The light flickered off his face, giving it a slightly demonic cast. The eyes, in particular, picked up the flames. Had I wanted someone to play the Devil, I could not have picked a better actor or setting.
“Tell me what's going on,” I said.
He shook his head. “Too general, Fool. Ask me something specific, and I'll decide whether I can answer or not.”
“All right. Why was Bastiani murdered?”
Whatever he was expecting me to ask, this wasn't it. The question took him off-guard, and he frowned.
“I was unaware that he was murdered,” he said carefully.
“But you suspected it.”
“I thought it possible,” he said. “The condition of his body, the expression on his face—it did not strike me as a natural death.”
“Were you friends?”
“I wouldn't say that,” he said. “We had business dealings together.”
“Profitable ones?”
“Sometimes, sometimes not.”
“Any profitable enough to kill for?”
He was smiling again.
“Truly, Fool, I was not anticipating this line of questioning,” he said. “A tawdry little matter of murder and money when great events are happening around us?”
“You expected me to ask about the weapons you have stored in the embolum?”
“I thought you might know about that,” he said. “Were you our mysterious ambassador from the fleet?”
I bowed.
“I thought as much,” he said. “Especially when you didn't stick around to make contact.”
“Who was the contact?”
“Well, as for that,” he began, and something glinted in the darkness behind him. The candle fell from his hand, and in the brief instant before it was extinguished, I saw his head fall from his body.
I immediately hurled my torch in that direction, but saw nothing. As the torch doused itself in the water, I stepped onto the base of the column by me, then leapt onto the one to my left and held my breath.
All I heard was the slight lapping of the water. Then, footsteps sloshing through the cistern. I drew my knife from my boot and slid my dagger from my sleeve. I pressed my back against the column and held the weapons down by my thighs, ready to slash in either direction.
But the footsteps were moving away from me. They were also moving away from the entrance. Then the sound changed from sloshing to steps on dry stone, and in the distance, a door opened and then shut.
There must have been another way into the cistern, not known to the general public. I wondered if Ranieri knew that. But I don't think that he knew the killer was there. The brief glimpse I had of the weapon was enough to show that it was an axe. And I had seen an awful lot of axes over the last few days.
Ranieri had been killed by a Varangian. I was certain of it.
I stood a while longer in the darkness to make sure no one else was waiting. Even one breath taken in that place would have been amplified enough for me to hear it. But there was none.
I pulled the lantern from under my cloak. The candle was still burning. It was a weak flame but would have to suffice. Holding it up in my left hand and with my knife ready in my right, I cautiously stepped toward the late merchant.
Just before reaching the body, I stubbed my toe on something that
rolled away a few feet. I recoiled as I realized I had just kicked the poor fellow's head like a football. Keeping the lantern safely out of the reach of the water, I searched Ranieri's body, grunting with satisfaction as I found the wicker box.
There was nothing else to do. I went back to the steps leading to the entrance. Just before I reached them, the reaction hit me and I retched, but I still managed to keep the lantern lit.
When I reached the street, Plossus was waiting across from the entrance.
“Nobody went in,” he said.
“Someone went in,” I replied. “There's another entrance somewhere. Maybe a well someone dug to reach the water without going over here. By the way, remind me never to drink any water from this cistern again.”
 
We went home, and I told them what happened.
“Do you think Ranieri killed Bastiani?” asked Rico.
“I don't know,” I said. “Somehow, I don't think so. He was hiding something, but that didn't seem to be it. And he was killed while we were talking about the Crusaders' contact inside the Venetian quarter.”
“Let's see the box,” urged Aglaia.
I pulled it from my pouch and placed it on the center of the table.
“Care to do the honors?” I asked her.
She reached forward and gently opened it. Nestled inside was a small, gray, sticky lump about the length of Rico's thumb.
“What is it?” asked Plossus.
“It's a cocoon,” said Aglaia. “I'm assuming it's silk, but I'm no expert.”
“Hardly seems worth all the fuss,” said Rico, examining it. “Sneaking
out one cocoon at a time won't even produce enough thread to make a lady's handkerchief.”
I took the cocoon and placed it back inside the box.
“So, instead of one murder and an answer, we now have two murders and more questions,” said Rico. “Good work, Feste. At this rate, we should wipe out the quarter by the end of the year.”
[N]ever, in any city, have so many been besieged by so few.
——GEOFFROY DE VILLEHARDOUIN,
THE CONQUEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE
 
 
T
he following morning, a rumbling from the north sent us running to the rooftop once again. The Crusaders had finished repairing the stone bridge across the neck of the Golden Horn, and the noise came from the mangonels and petrarries rolling slowly across it.
The army encamped on a hill opposite Blachernae called the Kosmidion for a monastery located there. I do not know who Saint Kosmas was. Perhaps he was the patron saint of sieges.
The Constantinopolitans did not take well to seeing the invaders cross the bridge unopposed. With so many idled by the shutting of the gates to the outside world, mobs formed, merged, split off and reformed like giant globs of oil throughout the city. The Blachernae complex had been constructed with an eye toward invasion from without and rebellion from within. When the surging crowds began bumping up against the interior wall, the Emperor ordered that the gates to the complex be shut to all but those on imperial business.
And fools, of course. Rico and Aglaia were Imperial Fools, and I generally had the run of the palace as well. Only Plossus couldn't get in, but he was needed elsewhere, anyway.
So, as the Crusaders crossed the bridge and the Greek citizens
fetched up against the walled-off home of their leader, I laid siege to an invidious bureaucrat.
“What on earth are you doing here?” said Philoxenites testily upon opening his door and seeing me.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I am, as ever, at your disposal,” he said with an ironic bow. He motioned me to a chair before his desk, but I chose to stand, remembering a previous time I sat in that same chair, bound with ropes and with a knife at my throat.
“You've been playing with me,” I said.
“How so?” he said, folding his hands on the desk.
“By having me followed,” I said. “And by using me to flush out Venetian insurrectionists so that you could eliminate them.”
“Not a bad plan,” he said. “I wish that it was true.”
“Did you hear about the body in the Cistern of the Columns?” I asked him.
“As a matter of fact, that little tidbit was just brought to me,” he said. “A member of the Vigla patrols the cistern every night around midnight. Usually he comes across amorous couples.”
“Well, this fellow didn't lose his head over a woman,” I said. “He lost it while he was talking to me. It was Ranieri who was killed, and a Varangian axe that did it.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“The only Varangians I know of who are capable of both that kind of stealth and that deadly efficiency are Will and Phil,” I said. “No one else in the Varangian Guard could have pulled this one off. You've been having them tail me. But they struck too soon. I was just about to get some answers out of him.”
He looked at me with disdain.
“Feste,” he said. “It is one thing to play a fool, but quite another
to become one. Perhaps you've been playing the role for too long.”
“Your meaning, Eunuch?” I asked.
“Will and Phil never got out of Galata,” he said. “They are presumed to be dead, not being the types who would let themselves be captured. But they haven't been seen since the battle at the tower.”
I looked at him, and he returned my gaze through hooded eyes. I couldn't tell if he was lying or not. He always looked like he was lying, even when he told the truth, so his present shifty demeanor gave me no clue.
“I appreciate your efforts,” he continued, “but you are wasting my time. This is the second cockeyed story that you've brought before me, and I am beginning to wonder if my faith in your abilities was misplaced.”
“Someone did kill Ranieri,” I said.
“Someone did,” he agreed. “Apparently with an axe. But there are many axes in this great city of ours, and even Varangian blades may be obtained from the right source. God only knows how many of the guard lose them dicing in back alleyways.”
“Maybe that was it,” I said dubiously.
“At least you've stirred something up,” he said thoughtfully. “They must be close to some course of action if they were willing to risk this. Have you talked to our mutual friend in Chalke yet?”
“No,” I said. “I wanted to wait until the time was ripe.”
There was a sudden crash, and the room shook slightly, sending an inkpot at the edge of the desk crashing to the floor.
“If you wait any longer, we will be beyond ripe and into rot,” said Philoxenites. “Get going, Fool.”
The stones that were launched from the Kosmidion were directed at the wall in front of Blachernae, but enough sailed over it into the palace to keep the residents clustered in the interior. The Greeks returned the barrage, but the invaders had the higher ground to their
vantage, and their machines kept up the attack in complete safety. The stones mostly damaged other stones and bricks, but one caught a pair of Imperial Guards patrolling the Blachernae wall. Their bodies were retrieved sixty feet away, flattened in their armor.
I strode briskly down the Mese to Chalke Prison. As I crossed the Augustaion, I saw a woman in mourning stop and stare at me. She raised her veil, and I recognized her as Bastiani's lady. Her expression was complicated to read. I could not blame her for despising me for spying on her in her grief, but there was something akin to sympathy mixed with it.
“You survived,” she said quietly.
“Yes, milady,” I said, bowing.
“I am glad for your wife's sake,” she said.
“Thank you, milady.”
She lowered her veil.
“Take care of her,” she whispered. “If you do not, then my curse will be on you.”
I watched her walk away until she was out of sight.
There was a stall where one could get ale near the entrance gates to Chalke, and I decided to avail myself of some fortification. As I paid for my drink, I was hailed from a couple of benches nearby. I turned and saw Tullio, the carpenter, and his mate, John Aprenos.
“It's the fool!” cried Tullio. “Come and sit with us until your cup is empty, and then we shall refill it.”
“Alas, I can only promise the first,” I said, joining them. “As much as I hate to say it, I have no time for a second today. How are things with you, friend Carpenter?”
He shrugged.
“Business is wanting,” he said. “I have tools and skills, but no more wood on which to wield them. I have become just as useless as my friend John.”
“Nay,” said Aprenos. “I am the more useless one. I will not cede the title.”
“I see you found your whore,” said Tullio.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Bastiani's whore,” said Tullio, gesturing with his cup toward the north end of the square. “That's the woman you were looking for, wasn't it?”
“I wasn't looking for her, exactly,” I said. “And she's not a whore, she's a lady.”
“Comes to the same thing,” commented Aprenos. “Just a matter of degree in what you pay them.”
“You are quite the philosopher,” I said.
“Plenty of time to think when the gates are shut,” said the huntsman, raising his cup.
“So, what brings the two of you here?” I asked.
“Visiting a mate of ours who got himself locked up,” said Tullio. “Made sure he's got a bottle or two to last him in case things get hot around here. And yourself?”
“On my way to do the same,” I said, and I drained my cup and tossed it back to the vendor. “Good luck, gentlemen. We'll have another when the war's over. On me.”
“We accept,” called Tullio as I left.
I entered Chalke without difficulty. With so much idle time forced upon the city, many of its people were doing the things they could not otherwise do, and that included visiting prisoners. The aisles between the cells were milling with people, and the tone of the place was strangely buoyant, almost raucous. I gathered that Tullio and Aprenos were not the only ones to bring in some wine.
The former emperor, as befit his rank, had the largest and most luxuriously appointed cell in the prison. It was the last one on the right, and was one of the few to have an actual bed, rather than a pile
of moldy hay or damp ticking. He shared it with a few other political prisoners who acted as an informal bodyguard, a situation winked at by the warden and probably by Emperor Alexios as well. The current emperor was a sentimental man in surprising ways. Having deposed, blinded, and imprisoned his brother, he wished no further harm upon him. A more pragmatic man would have simply had him killed.
I announced my approach with a low whistle, a salute that had long become familiar to Isaakios. He was sitting on the edge of his bed while one of his fellows read to him, but he stood immediately and strode firmly toward me, stopping just short of the bars.
He had been a strong man in his prime, but living in sightless confinement for so many years had by this point worn away much of his frame. His clothes, tattered remnants of rich, embroidered silks, hung loosely on his limbs, and his hair and beard, once a glorious red, were gray and matted.
Yet he still had dignity, even command in his carriage, and this gave me hope that we might actually pull this off.
“Is that you, Fool?” he whispered eagerly.
“Sire, it is I,” I replied, kneeling.
He motioned me to my feet.
“Don't waste time on ceremony,” he said impatiently. “Tell me what has happened.”
“The invaders have rebuilt the stone bridge and have encamped on the Kosmidion.”
“Interesting,” he murmured. “They must think that section of the wall to be the most vulnerable to attack. My predecessors should have done a better job building it. But they would be foolish to attempt it, nevertheless. They can't possibly sustain the losses they would have in taking it.”
“Normally, I would agree with you,” I said. “But these are not normal times.”
“How so, my friend?”
“Your brother has mismanaged the armies and lost the confidence of the people. He may be content to sit in the palace and wait out the siege, but the city won't have it.”
“Won't they?” he chuckled. “About time they came to their senses. So, you think they will rise against my brother?”
“I think it possible,” I said. “Which leaves the city wide open to being taken by the Crusaders.”
“Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “Things would never have come to this state if I had remained emperor.”
“There are those who agree with you,” I said, and he nodded at the compliment. “And there are those who would have you Emperor again.”
He would have stared had he still possessed eyes.
“What are you saying?” he asked softly.
“I have been asked to inquire of your willingness to assume the great burden of rulership again.”
“A burden,” he said. “Aye, it is that. Does not God have the burden of the world on His shoulders? When it fell upon me to lead this empire, I did so willingly, even though it cost me much care and woe. I am still that man, Fool. I would accept the burden gladly, and bear it lightly. But we are talking of fancies, are we not?”
“Milord, stranger things have happened,” I said. “For years, you have lived in terror that soldiers would come through these bars in the dead of night to carry you to your doom. Now, I ask that you listen for these soldiers with hope.”
“I swear, Fool, that if you prophesy correctly, you shall live with all that an emperor's generosity may provide,” he said.
“I am but a messenger, milord,” I said.
“As was the Archangel Gabriel,” he said. “Tell them that when the time comes, Isaakios will be ready.”
“Then, sire, I will take my leave of you.”
I noticed, as I left, that a dark form was stepping away from the front of the cell next to the former emperor's. No doubt he had heard our conversation. I hoped that he was not a lackey of the current emperor.
Then, as a small group of people walked in my direction, I heard a lute playing. I stared dumbfounded as my wife walked blithely between the cells as if she was a strolling entertainer at a garden party.
She marked me as she came to the cell next to Isaakios's. She smiled, her fingers never hesitating.
“My nanny always said I would end up with a man in prison,” she drawled.

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