It began with such a small spark, the fire that almost consumed the city from within.
Two housewives fighting over a wheel of bread.
Sofia was there, in the Forum of the Bull, ten paces away from the front of the line. She had walked across the city because of the rumour that the monks of St Myrelaion, to honour their saint’s day, were baking loaves from their private granary and giving it as alms to the poor. And as almost everyone was poor in the city now, Sofia fetched her own bread. She’d stood in one of the long lines for two hours, Thakos and Minerva at her side, the boy clutching his slingshot, proudly acting as her guard. But the closer she got to the three tables, the more what had seemed a mountain of flat loaves diminished. Each family was given one only, though time was spent with many pleading every excuse for one more. There had already been arguments, that family members had split up to get more than their share. A fight had broken out between two men who claimed the other had already been in line and returned. Everywhere Sofia saw the same expression on faces drawn tight by ever-present hunger – an angry glitter in the eye as others got what each desired, a sullen droop to the mouth, bitter thoughts hanging there as unspoken words. She knew her own face had the same expression, that she stared at those who had received and could not wait, stuffing their mouths with bread, needing to swallow repeatedly to suppress her gushing saliva.
Five paces away, Minerva crying her hunger again, Thakos sulking … as one monk behind the table turned to the other, who shook his head. Whatever was before him was the last of it. A despairing murmur moved through the crowd. Someone shoved her. Like many others, Sofia could only double her prayers that she was not this close and too late.
So she was near enough to hear everything, to witness the spark fall on the tinder of anger and hunger, to fan it into flame with her own breath. A woman at the head of the line had produced a small scroll of parchment. ‘My sister,’ she declared in a voice that showed she was an archon, of the ruling classes, from the airy villas by the water and not the fetid slums nearby, ‘is too sick to come. She writes this note and prays that the good brothers will pity her and send her life-sustaining bread.’
It sounded like a speech, something from a play that might have been spoken in the Hippodrome in happier times. But it did not produce the laughter that might have greeted it there. A growl ran from just behind the woman and all the way back. In Sofia’s throat, as in the others.
It was the monk who answered, his round pink face showing little of the privations of those he served. ‘Alas, kyra, we have so little left, and those who have waited here—’
‘Ridiculous!’ she interrupted. ‘Do you not realise who I am? My husband is Aris Noulis, the megas primikerios! He has given such bounty to your monastery. Speak to the abbot. And give me my sister’s bread!’
The monk hesitated. But it was the woman just before Sofia who spoke, yelled, in the rough accent of the streets, ‘Her sister is a whore and dances with Venetians every night in the Tavern of Scythia. If she’s sick, it’s because she’s swallowed too many Italian cocks.’
Harsh laughter took the crowd, and Sofia glanced down, but Minerva and Thakos were still lost to their own woes. She could not know if the accusation was true. But it could be, and she felt her anger rise at yet another local woman carousing with the ‘allies’, who kept the best food to themselves and let the people they’d come to defend starve.
‘I’ll take what I deserve,’ the rich woman declared shrilly.
‘This is what you deserve,’ shouted the other and, bending, she scooped horse dung from the cobbles of the forum and threw it full in the woman’s face. More laughter came as the thrower shouted, ‘Now give the bitch her one loaf and give me mine.’
The rich woman gasped, wiped shit from her skin, then hurled herself at her assailant, leading with her long nails. As they locked together, screeching, Sofia felt fury seize her, a surge that swept her forward like the others, the line dissolving in a universal cry of ‘Give me mine!’
‘No! No!’ cried the monks, as the crowd rushed the table, grabbing the few loaves that remained there. Sofia, near the front, got her hands on one, only to have it snatched away by a snarling, toothless man. She slapped him, hard, grabbed for the bread, which tore apart in their hands. Stuffing what she held down the front of her dress, she turned to look for her children … but they were gone, dissolved into the mayhem. Everywhere people tussled for the precious rounds, and much ended up squelched into the dung and mud, where men and women snatched it up anyway and chewed without wiping. The monks’ tables were overturned, so were the wagons that had borne the bread. The two women rolled in the muck, oblivious to all but their quarrel.
‘Minerva! Thakos!’ Sofia screamed, thrusting through the jostling bodies. Then she glimpsed her son. ‘Thakos!’ she cried again, and struck out for him, shoving aside any who bounced into her. ‘Where is Minerva?’ she yelled when she reached him, seized him.
‘I do not know,’ he sobbed, tears flowing. ‘I had her hand and then …’
Sofia looked frantically around, crying her daughter’s name. But her voice was lost to the roar.
Another’s wasn’t. Another’s, loud and deep as a bull’s bellow, cut through the noise, and even Sofia, seeking everywhere, looked up to the large man in a stained butcher’s smock standing on the fountain of Aphrodite, arms spread wide. ‘Greeks! Greeks!’ he shouted. ‘Citizens! I know where there is bread. I know where there is bread!’ The shouted repeated phrase diminished the noise enough so more could hear. ‘The bastard foreigners have granaries stuffed with grain. They feast each night on roasted lamb and quail, while we starve!’ A huge shout greeted this, as more and more stopped their scrapping to listen. ‘It’s our city, isn’t it?’ the man continued. ‘Why should a Venetian eat my food?’ He pumped a fist into the air. ‘Give me mine,’ he yelled.
It was the woman’s cry from before, the cry taken up now. There were perhaps two hundred people in the forum, and they all rushed as one to its northern exit, the way that led to the enclaves of the foreigners. Sofia, clutching Thakos, did not move, hoping that when the forum was clear, she would see her daughter. But when the last yelling person had run out, only beaten monks, upturned tables and squashed bread was left.
‘Come,’ she said, dragging Thakos forward. There was nothing she could do but follow. Minerva had to have been swept up in the crowd.
‘Mother,’ Thakos said, pointing.
Sofia looked down. An edge of bread poked out from her dress. She pulled the piece out, split it into three, gave the largest portion to her son, tucked away the next biggest. They ate as they ran, catching up to the crowd where the main road, the Meze, crossed.
‘Minerva!’ she cried, again and again.
But the mob was larger now, men and women joining from the side streets of the poor quarter they came through, each taking up the cry that had turned into one chant of rage, drowning all other words.
‘Give me mine!’
Theon was with Constantine, watching him pray at the tomb of his father in the Church of Christ Pantocrator, when the soldier ran in, his spurred heels clanging off the stone floor, violating the silence and seeming to cause the frescoed saints to frown ever more deeply. Theon drew him aside, and when the panting man had regained enough breath to tell his tale, listened to the barest minimum he required.
He went straight to the emperor. ‘Majesty,’ he said.
‘Another attack?’
‘No, sire. Well, in a way. An attack from within.’ He relayed what he had heard.
Constantine listened, nodding. ‘I feared this. How large is the mob?’
‘A few hundred strong. But the soldier tells that more are joining it every minute.’
‘Will they stop in the Amalfitian quarter, think you?’
‘I do not. They know – all know – that the Venetian warehouses beyond it are the richest and best supplied.’
Constantine turned, headed for the door. ‘They must be
stopped. If we lose the forces of Venice …’ He swallowed. ‘I must stop them.’
‘Majesty, please.’ His tone halted the emperor, who turned. In a low voice, for others were near now, Theon continued, ‘You are loved, it is true. But not by all. Many still think that the ill that befalls us is not just the greed of foreigners, but God’s curse. Because we have forsaken our holy church and accepted the union with Rome.’ He raised a hand as Constantine made to speak. ‘Sire, I do not think so. But riots can turn on many causes, and if some agitators were to see you, blame you …’ He shook his head. ‘Let me go, majesty. If there is blame to take, let me take it.’
Constantine stared for a long moment, then nodded. ‘You are right, as ever, oikeios.’ He took Theon’s arm, led him outside where a dozen men of his personal guard stood swiftly to attention. ‘And you can take something more than blame. Take my guard. Their barracks is on the way. Stop there, gather more …’ he squeezed, ‘and crush this riot. Stamp its leaders underfoot like snakes upon the path.’
‘I will, basileus.’ He used the old military title for the empire’s war leader, delighted that Constantine had used such a familiar one for the first time. He was happy to be the emperor’s ‘kin’. He had made himself useful since the siege began. But to rise even higher, he needed to prove his worth in matters other than lists and tallies.
I’ll never distinguish myself tussling with armoured Turks upon the walls, he thought as he walked to his horse. Yet a rabble of gutter filth, rioting in the streets?
He mounted, then looked at the men mounting behind him, dressed in mail, bearing spears and swords. Constantine had already spoken to the guard commander, who now looked to Theon. The men were ready for a fight. And Theon was delighted to lead them to it, and watch them triumph – from a safe distance.
He dug spurs into his horse’s flanks. ‘Forward!’ he cried.
*
Sofia had still not found Minerva. And the swelling crowd made it ever harder. She was torn – should she press on and assume that the little girl had been swept forward with the mob, or was she somewhere behind them now, lost? She knew she had joked with Gregoras that her daughter could be abandoned in a strange city and make her way. And Minerva did have a self-belief uncommon in a five-year-old. But it had been a joke, and beyond the narrow streets that surrounded her own home, Constantinople was as strange a city as one could find.
‘Minerva,’ she screamed, again and again, knowing it was useless, unable to stop herself. Beside her, Thakos sobbed still.
Glancing ever behind her, at men and women spat out by the crowd, carrying items stolen from looted shops, Sofia pressed forward. The mob was surging north-east now, and she felt she had no option but to follow it. It swelled at every junction, the wider Byzantine avenues allowing it to flow fast, and the warehouses that were sacked along the way did not slow it much. The Amalfitians, other Italians, did not have the wealth of their richer countrymen, and their stocks were not enough to feed the riot’s hunger – which was not only for food. An old Jew was dragged from his oil store and beaten half to death. Though he and his family had probably lived in the city as long as any of his assailants, he was a foreigner and responsible for all their woes.
‘Give me mine!’ The cry of a housewife in the Forum of the Bull had become the voice of riot. They yelled it as they struck, beat, stole, wrecked.
They marched into the Forum of Theodosius. The other side of it, streets led to the Venetian wharves and warehouses. As Sofia was swept into the great plaza, she realised, with a sudden gasp of air, the folly of what she was about. She would never find her daughter while this mob ruled. And she was risking her son’s life in the search. ‘Thakos!’ she shouted, pulling the boy by the arm she’d never let go. ‘This way. We must …’
She tried to lead him left, to the edge and safety. But it was like swimming crosswise against a spring tide; for every step she took forward, she was pushed two along. She was being dragged deeper into the square, towards the entrance of the streets and all they led to – further riot, further wreckage, further harm. She struggled in vain – and then it was as if everyone halted at once, flung suddenly onto the person in front of them, though she saw it was more a ripple, those behind her moving and sticking all the way to the back of the square. The sudden stop caused a sudden cessation of sound, the whole mob pausing to draw breath, as did she.
And then a voice came, one she knew well, loud, commanding. ‘Disperse!’ her husband shouted. ‘Disperse now, or it will go ill with you.’
‘Theon,’ she cried, the word getting out before the crowd’s roar swallowed it.
‘Give me mine!’ they screamed, as one.
It was strange, Theon thought, as he peered through the raised lances of his cavalrymen, the axe-headed halberds of his infantry, that some woman should have recognised him when his face was half covered with his visor and he was astride his horse behind guards much taller than himself. For a moment, he was concerned that what he was about to do would be remembered as his doing. Then he smiled. It was good that they would remember his name, know it, fear it. If the city survived, when all the beloved warriors on the walls had hung up their arms, he would be beside his emperor, the risen man, and the city would fear him. Better that than striving unknown. Better far than being loved. If he was to thrive.
He glanced around the square. If he was not truly a military man, if he had always preferred Cicero to Caesar, still he had studied enough to lay this ambush well. At the entrances of all the streets that led off from the forum, sunlight glimmered on the steel tips of spears, double-ranked. Only the way they had come was still open to the mob.
He looked through his ordered men, to the swirl before them. Men and women snarled and snapped there like feral dogs, faces distorted by fury and hunger. Some mouthed curses, others still chanting the same ridiculous phrase, ‘Give me mine!’ What did they mean? What was theirs? Nothing, for they were the scum of the city.
He’d waited a short time for them to obey him. None looked as though they would. Indeed, the front of the mob, impelled by within and by the people still pushing into the square, was already pressing close and spitting on his double-ranked halberdiers. In a few seconds, soldiers and mob would be touching. That could not be allowed. He reached and tapped the commander of the guard beside him on the arm. ‘Now,’ he said.
‘Over their heads, Megas Stratopedarches?’
Theon smiled. He liked being addressed as a military man, as much as he had liked being called ‘kin’ by the emperor earlier. And as a commander of soldiers, he had to make decisions. Hard ones, sometimes, though this one, truly, was not. ‘No. We should not waste the bullets.’
The officer bit his lip, then nodded. Saluting, he turned to his men and shouted commands. His foot and horse guards swung to left and right, as he and Theon moved their horses aside. Perhaps the forefront of the crowd thought they were being allowed through, because they started forward with a shout, only to fetch up suddenly, the ones in front tumbling as the ones behind shoved, as what was behind the guards was revealed – twenty arquebusiers, their weapons on forked shafts planted on the cobbles, muzzles forward, glowing cords above the breech.
‘Fire!’ the officer shouted.
The blast, Theon thought, was loud enough to be heard across the square, even above the inane chant. It brought a near silence again, broken immediately by the wails of those struck, those who had not died immediately, the shrieks of those behind them shoving back. The smoke made Theon cough, blocked his vision for a moment. Waving it aside, he saw the bodies, the anger on the faces transformed to terror. It was the moment. ‘Advance,’ he called crisply, and as the gunners carried their still smoking weapons to the side, the mounted guardsmen behind them, fifty strong, formed double ranks again, lowered their lance tips and came at a walk.
Theon drew his father’s sword. Only for show. He did not think he’d need to display his ineptitude with it.
‘Thakos!’ Sofia screamed. r />
The boy had been ripped from her grasp by the crowd as if they were the sea and a wave had taken him. She glimpsed his panicked face between two large, jostling men, and then he vanished as both were shoved opposite ways. She screamed again, tried to force her way back, stumbled as her feet struck something soft on the ground. She was standing on a body, the fallen woman screaming in agony, the scream suddenly cut off as a boot trampled her face. Sofia, ducking lower, trying to keep her balance and dodge beneath flailing limbs to where she’d last seen her son, was caught hard by an elbow in the ear. Instant agony, and ringing loud enough to reduce the shrieking all around her. Reduce, but not eliminate. She heard neighing, snorting, the clack of metal hooves on cobbles. Behind her, the crowd parted enough for her to see a horse rising on its rear legs, its rider lifting a lance high up, stabbing down. He was maybe a dozen paces away.
She fought for her footing, won, propelling herself off the body. ‘Thakos!’ she screamed again, praying her saviour that he was upright, beseeching the mother Maria to protect another’s son, to return him to her.
Her prayers were answered. The tide that had ripped them apart flung them together again. His foot was trapped in someone else’s fall, he was crying out as another tripped on his twisted leg, falling towards her. She caught him and, with a strength she did not know she possessed, wrenched him clear.
‘My foot,’ he wailed, and she held him up, looked around. There were three roads that led south from the square, and she could see that the main one, the one they’d come up, was blocked with the hordes trying to force their way through. They were closer to one that seemed to be letting some people run. An arm under his, she half carried, half dragged him towards it. Bodies bunching, sticking, a huge shove, the sound of limbs cracking and they went through with the surge, vaulting some of the bodies that rolled there, stepping over others. People ceased screaming, to run faster. She heard the hooves behind her, but her son could not run, so she cut sideways, beneath the flailing arms of cursing men, and stepped into the doorway of a shop.