The Sheen of the Silk

Ninety-five

GIULIANO WENT WITH GIUSEPPE AND THE OTHER MEN, leaving Palermo and traveling hastily, often by night. By the middle of April, the whole island of Sicily was in revolt; only one French overlord was spared, because of the humanity he had shown in his rule. Every other garrison was taken and the occupants put to the sword.

By the end of the month, Giuliano stood beside Giuseppe on the hillside overlooking the harbor of Messina. Below him lay the massed fleet of Charles of Anjou, ships of every size and rig he could name, at least two hundred of them crowded together so they darkened the sea and there was barely room for others to swing at anchor without touching one another.

How many catapults did they carry? How many siege towers to storm the city walls? How much Greek fire to ruin and burn?

“They look deserted,” Giuseppe said quietly, squinting into the sun.

“They probably are, all but a watch,” Giuliano replied. Two days earlier, Messina also had risen against the French, who had retreated to the great granite castle of Mategriffon but had not had the strength to hold it. “But they are still a threat to Byzantium. The Venetian fleet is coming with more men, more ships, more armor. The siege engines are still there, and the horses can always be stolen again.”

Giuseppe stared at him. “What do you want? To sink them?”

Giuliano knew that he would be breaking the oath he had made to Tiepolo that he would never betray the interests of Venice. But the world was not the same as it had been when Tiepolo was alive. Venice was not the same; Rome certainly wasn’t.

“Burn them,” he said softly. “Pitch. Small boats, ones we can tow behind a rowing boat. It must be when the wind is right, and the current-”

“And you would do that? You… a Venetian,” Giuseppe said softly.

“Half Venetian,” Giuliano corrected him. “My mother was Byzantine. But that has nothing to do with it… or not everything, anyway. It’s wrong. To conquer Byzantium is wrong. There’s nothing Christian in it. It doesn’t matter who they are, or what are their beliefs. The point is that it should not ever be who we are.”

Giuseppe stared at him. “You are a strange man, Giuliano. But I’m with you.” He held out his hand, offering it.

Giuliano took it and gripped it hard, holding on to it.

They gathered allies among the Sicilians who had lost relatives, friends, and brothers to the French. They found the boats they needed and the pitch. It was not as much as Giuliano would have liked, but they could not risk waiting any longer.

He stood alone on the quayside, watching the sun set in the west, sulfurous, underlighting the clouds that would make it darker and obscure the moon. He could never watch the sky now without a memory of Anastasius stirring in his mind. Their quiet conversations haunted him when he least expected it.

And it was Anastasius who had given him more than peace with his mother. He had healed that deepest wound.

What part had that in the terrible thing Giuliano was planning to do? While others were helping him, it was his moral decision. There were so many ships, some with men still aboard. He wanted to destroy them all, so they would never carry war to Byzantium. Did it matter that they would also not recapture Jerusalem? Would the crusading knights make anything better than it already was in that troubled city, anything safer or kinder than now?

It was too late to change the decision, even if he wanted to. His mind was afraid of failure, afraid of the horror he was about to unleash, but he was not in doubt.

Stefano, the strongest rower and most familiar with the Bay of Messina, set out first, rowing one boat and towing the other with the pitch and oil in it.

Giuseppe set out next when they judged Stefano to be halfway across, although they could not see him, hidden by the forest of ships at anchor. He would look as if he were some kind of supply boat. With a second unmanned boat behind him, he would not be mistaken for a fisherman.

“Good luck,” Giuliano said quietly, crouching low on the shore and pushing the stern away as Giuseppe bent at the oar.

Giuseppe saluted him silently, and within moments he was twenty feet away, oars dipping without sound, rhythmically, the waves slapping against the sides. He had to work to keep from being carried inshore by the current.

Giuliano waited until he could only just see him, then he waded in, climbed into his own boat, and grasped the oars. He was used to the open sea and to giving orders rather than bending his own back, but urgency drove him now, the emotion high in his chest, almost in his throat, as he felt the wind and the water begin to fight against him.

He had not rowed in a long time, and his shoulders ached. He would have blisters on his hands before the night was out. He must be upward of the easternmost warship before he lit the pitch and cast off. Stefano would be first. When he saw the fire start, Giuseppe, in the second boat, would light his, then finally Giuliano. They would all have to row out to sea, against the current and the wind, to be sure of not getting caught in the flames themselves.

He looked over his shoulder, straining in the darkness to see the spark as soon as it showed. Like the others, he had tinder, torches, and oil to make sure the fire took hold before he cast off the burning boat. If he cut it loose too soon and the flames died, it would all have been for nothing.

He reached the point as closely as he could judge, but had to keep his hands on the oars to avoid drifting into the fleet. Slowly he turned so the fireboat was behind him and he was looking westward across the bay. Where were the others?

The water was slapping hard against the hull of the boat. He had to lean on the oars to keep his distance from the nearest warship. The current was running fast, and the wind rising. His back ached, and the muscles of his shoulders cracked.

He strained his eyes to see. Then suddenly there it was, a wick of light, growing, a yellow flame, bigger and bigger. Then another, closer to him, tiny at first but swelling, billowing in the darkness.

He slipped the oars and grasped for the tinder, taking a moment to find it in the darkness at the bottom of the boat. Then he had it. He fumbled for the torch, found the first one, then the second, and a third for safety. The tinder refused to ignite. He was drifting toward the warship, the sea taking him faster and faster. His fingers were clumsy. He must steady himself. He had one chance!

Then the tinder caught and the spark lit the torch. It flared up. He touched it to the second. They burned hard and hot. He hurled the first one into the boat of oil and pitch. The flame took a moment, then roared up. He lit the third torch from the second and threw them both also. The flames were high and hot already. He must cut the rope or it would take him with it. Away to the west, the flames were mounting as the fireboats caught the seaward vessels.

The rope was thick and wet. It seemed to take forever to saw through it. Why hadn’t he brought a sharper blade? Patience! At last it was cut through and fell into the sea. He sat back on the thwart and grasped the oars, throwing his weight into pulling, one stroke and then two, three. He was too close to the warships. He could hear men shouting, panic in their voices. To the west, the flames were hard and bright. The first ship was ablaze, fire up to its masts, leaping high.

He pulled as hard as he could, digging the oars deep. He must pull evenly. Tear a muscle now and he would burn with them. He must get away, then back to shore. Were Giuseppe and Stefano all right? Had they the strength to make shore? He should have told Giuseppe, out in the middle of the bay, to make for the farther shore, not try to beat against the wind back to the east.

No, that was stupid; he wouldn’t have to be told!

The light was growing stronger as the ship in the middle of the bay burned more strongly. The canvas of the furled sails was on fire. Then the Greek fire in the hold exploded, white hot, like the heart of a furnace. Pieces of flaming debris were sent high into the air. Giuliano leaned on the oars and caught his breath for a moment as a streamer of flame shot into the sky and landed on another ship, catching immediately on the dry wood. Other pieces fell into the sea. He stared at the beauty and horror as one ship after another burned until the whole bay was an inferno like the floor of some visionary hell.

Another ship with Greek fire exploded, sending debris soaring into the air. The roar of it was deafening, and the heat seared Giuliano’s skin even as far away as he was.

A blazing plank of wood splashed into the water only a few feet from him. Galvanized into action, he grasped the oars and threw his body against the weight of them, sending the boat hurtling forward.

Fifteen minutes later, he reached the eastern shore a hundred feet from where he had set out and stood to watch as one of the warships listed and dropped lower in the water.

By morning, there would be little left of Charles’s fleet. The fact that Giuliano, a Venetian, had lit the fire that destroyed it was perhaps some small measure of redemption for Venice from its ravage of Byzantium seventy years ago.

He turned slowly and made his way toward the town. He could see his way quite clearly in the light of the flames. They roared up into the sky, casting a glare over the drifting wreckage, the water of the bay now showing brazen between the jagged black skeletons of the ruined ships. It lit the fronts of the houses red and yellow, and as Giuliano came closer to the buildings, he could see their windows, brilliant panes of flat gold in the darker stones.

People were crowding out to watch in amazement and horror at the sight. Some clung to each other as each new explosion filled the air with sound and fury. Others stood paralyzed, unbelieving.

Giuliano increased his pace, striding out. Giuseppe and Stefano would go back into the hills, up toward Etna, where the servants of Charles’s men would never find them, but he needed to go to Byzantium. He must carry the news.

The massive buttresses of Mategriffon towered above him, men on the battlements staring into the inferno on the sea, their faces lit like effigies of copper. Giuliano looked up and for a moment saw Charles himself, his features twisted with rage and the dawning understanding of what had happened to the precious dreams of his lifetime.

For an instant he looked down, perhaps saw something familiar in Giuliano’s stride or the dark outline of his figure as he passed a wall, pale in the reflected light. Charles stiffened with recognition.

Giuliano lifted his arm in a salute. In spite of his weariness and the ache in his body, he quickened his pace. He must be gone before archers could be summoned or soldiers called to hunt him down.