It was the year of Our Lord 1204, nearly two months since the death of the Doge Dandolo and the sack of Constantinople. Erazzio Sabbitini watched from the fort's wall as his serfs built a pile out of wood in the main marketplace of the village. They toiled beneath his banner and the Lion of St. Mark. Greeks, of course, but his just the same.
No longer was he Errazzio the landless, a destitute son of a destitute house. Now he could call himself a Lord, the Master of the Isle of Raikos.
The men carried wood. The women watched. They resembled their twisted and sun-stained burdens -- corded and knotted as olive trees. Rough shepherds, farmers, and fishermen. They lived in the bone-white houses bordering the square.
A trio of old men blew into pipes and tapped drums with swollen knuckles. Each family brought its allotted share to the pile. Broken chairs too old to mend, driftwood culled from the beach, and those trees lost to the Aegean winds.
There would be more to come, Erazzio thought. This was only the first night of the festival and the fire needed to last three days as legend claimed Raikos's Torch first burned while Christ lay in the tomb.
Below Erazzio, the line paused. The musicians stopped playing for an instant, their inhalation the collective gasp of the village. Errazzio straightened himself to present the appropriate image of Lord and Master, noble son of Venice La Serrissima.
He nodded to his men in the square. Frankish mercenaries for the most part, they marched behind a young boy. Each had joined Erazzio in Venice and set sail with him in search of plunder beyond the Darandelles. Like the islanders, each soldier carried his burden of wood: planks from the galley, broken barrels, jonker ends of hempen rope too old to be of use.
At their head marched Giacomo, Erazzio's brother, wearing a dented breastplate in place of ceremonial dress. A spark of hate burned in Giacomo's eye for the islanders. It would do well to watch him, Errazio thought.
On the wall beside Erazzio, Tio Stefano shuddered. "This is blasphemy. We should not indulge their errors."
"I would not rob my subjects of their feasts," Errazzio said.
In the square, Giacomo found his place behind the boy. He bowed stiffly to Erazzio and signaled the soldiers to approach the pile. Their piecemeal armor clanked and squeaked until finally, empty-handed, the last took his place on the cobblestones behind Giacomo.
The music reached a shrill peak, pipe and drum circling each to a final stop. The silence lasted a heartbeat, before the chants emerged.
Tio Stefano muttered a hasty prayer, the priest's right hand rising and falling in a rapid flutter of benediction.
"Idolaters. Schismatics. Blasphemers," he said.
Erazzio had heard all of the words before. He had no desire to enter into the gulf between Churches. Greek or Roman, it made no difference to him. Certainly it was wiser to give Tio Stefano privilege over that of the band of monachoi on the hill. But it did not serve Erazzio to antagonize his subjects.
The chanting grew louder, low and sonorous, approaching from the narrow road between the bone-white buildings: the road that went up the barren hill. The villagers waited before their piled offerings. A dog barked from one of the yards as the first priest stepped into view. Hooded so even his eyeholes were veiled, a fuming censor marked time to his footsteps. Behind him other monachoi emerged from the narrow gap, the emblazoned Chi-Rho burning white upon each black robe.
And the last carried the Torch: a fire unlike any Erazzio had ever seen. White, golden, and blue, the flame ranged through all those colors, shifting and dissolving. It swallowed the monk's hand in blinding light, the very air burning without a source.
"A miracle," Erazzio whispered, his eyes unable to leave the Torch. Tio Stefano made no reply, but hastily blessed himself again.
The monachoi formed a circle around the pile. Eight of them, each identical to the next in his simple schema. The Torch Bearer approached and touched a twisted bit of driftwood with the Torch. A tongue of flame sprouted instantly. The monk moved further along the pile and touched again. The fire crawled slowly as the band resumed their music. It danced in Erazzio's eyes, leaping from a stick to run down a length of cord before diverging to a chair leg. The music grew to match the blaze.
#
Erazzio sat at the head of the oak table, Giacomo and Tio Stefano on either side of him. Their soldiers ate at table beneath them. The hall, so recently won from the Byzantines, stank of damp soot, and the sky beyond the window glowed orange from the bonfire. A pack of dogs competed among the rushes at their feet for scraps. The shrill piping from outside carried into the hall.
"Will they play all night?" Tio Stefano asked.
"Have no worries, Stefano," Erazzio said. "I've been assured the music lasts only the first night."
"From the hooded monachoi?" Tio Stefano sneered. "You should not be so quick to take their council."
Erazzio ignored the priest. He sipped at the bitter wine and watched his brother scrape a shard of bone across a trencher.
"Giacomo," Erazzio said. "We must import better grapes than these when we have established ourselves."
Giacomo nodded, his cheeks flushed with wine. He dropped the bone beside his boot. One of the hounds crept forward to take the morsel. When it came close, Giacomo kicked the beast in the ribs. The dog howled and yelped to the guffaws of the soldiers at the other tables.
Tio Stefano spat an olive pit on the floor. "It's deviltry."
Erazzio leaned back in his chair to view the priest better. "Do you believe in the Torch and St. Raikos, Stefano?"
"Rome has never mentioned him. Nor do the Gospels."
Erazzio smiled. "That is not what I asked. St. Raikos, torchbearer to Christ on the night of the Last Supper, his Torch burning over a thousand years, and yet not consumed. Do you believe? I assure you, Stefano -- Rome will never know what you say."
"Our pagan forefathers kept sacred hearths burning for centuries." Tio Stefano frowned. "These Greeks are certainly no better than them."
Erazzio shook his head. "We did not see some ember or coal, kept from the end of one fire to light the next."
"I believe," Tio Stefano said, "that if Our Lord left such a light upon this earth, He would not have entrusted it to schismatics who commit sacrilege in his name."
"The body of St. Mark resides in the kingdom of the Mamlukes," Erazzio said. "Yet he is the patron saint of Venice."
"That is a sacrilege I pray to see ended." Tio Stefano took hold of the amphorae and splashed wine into his bowl.
"Say it were true," Erazzio said. "Say the very light that led Christ to His ultimate glorification still burned. It would be a light to guide the world." He pointed out the window at the glow in the sky. He lowered his voice. "And here it sits on the hill outside our door, shut in by a group of hooded priests reeking of smoke and incense. What would you do for it? What would they say of you back in Rome, if you returned with that light?"
For a moment neither of them spoke. A log upon the hearth snapped. One of the dogs padded across the floor, its nails scratching the stones. Outside, the piping continued. Erazzio realized not only Tio Stefano, but Giacomo was paying close attention to his words.
"Brother," Giacomo said, "are you mad?"
"No, not mad -- not mad at all. Think of it, a fire that burns for a thousand years. It would be a miracle."
"A miracle?"
"Yes Giacomo, a miracle, and we saw it with our own eyes."
"Erazzio, I beg you be careful," Tio Stefano said. "Do not believe these Greeks."
"Stefano, I have no desire to fall out of favor with Rome. I wish merely to bring her greater glory."
"What if it isn't a miracle at all," Giacomo said. His eyes grew wide. "What if it is something else?"
"Like what?" Stefano said. "Say what you think."
Giacomo looked about the table from Tio Stefano to his brother. "Fire. Greek Fire. We were all at Constantinople -- we saw what it was capable of."
Tio Stefano blessed himself. "God protect us."
"That's what I believe the monachoi have on the hill." Giacomo said. "Raikos is a myth created to hide the secret. We should have slaughtered them when we first got here."
"Slaughter?" Erazzio laughed. "My subjects? No Giacomo, one does not keep a secret by clothing it in gold. If I knew the secret of Greek fire, I would not spread stories of a miracle to hide it. I'd bury it beneath the plainest stone I could find."
Erazzio swept the remains of his meal onto the floor. He cleansed his hand in the finger bowl and dried them on his sleeve. "Now that I have seen a miracle, I plan to make it mine. If it brings glory to Rome then so be it. Now I ask you again. What would you do to possess such a fire?"
#
By morning much of the pile had been consumed, leaving a ring of black remains and ash smoldering in the town square. The villagers gathered those remains that had escaped the flames and built heaps of them around the town. Erazzio passed them on his way to the shore.
Smoke still tinged the air even as far as the crude dry dock the Venetians had constructed out of sand and stones. The galley sat atop wood braces, its sides still tacky from an application of pitch. Well distant from the ship was another pile of wood as the monachoi commanded to have built. Errazzio approached the soldiers waiting there. The men shifted to their feet, forming ranks.
Erazzio inspected each of them. Their armor dented, and their skin scarred. What had they been in Venice? What had they been in France? Landless sons of nobles? Blacksmiths? Shepherds? Bandits? Here they were -- the gentry of Raikos -- and soon they would possess a miracle.
"When the monks approach we seize them and take their robes," Erazzio said. "The rest of you follow us up the hill to the church."
To a man they looked inland. The white cube of the church with its domed bell tower squatted above the town on a plateau of barren stone -- higher even then the fort where Giacomo and the rest of the Venetians waited. Below the church, a tower of smoke rose from the village.
"They've started," Erazzio said. Hands touched the hilts of weapons around him. One fellow told a joke, too low for Erazzio to hear, but he joined in the laughter.
A procession of villagers appeared at the top of the stairs. Each carried a torch. Erazzio scanned them for the black schema. Not a monk stood among them. He paced to the pile. His men lingered by him.
A squat stump of a man broke from the crowd. He bent his arm back and let his torch fly. The rest followed, the lit embers falling down to the dock. Erazzio swore and drew his sword. "Put those torches out!" He shouted, running for the stairs.
Another volley rained down from atop the stair. One torch arced through the air gracefully enough to make Erazzio pause in stride. The fire crawled the length of the wood in retreat from the wind. It struck the pitch-blackened side of the galley in a burst of sparks.
A pair soldiers ran to put out the fire. Roof tiles spun down upon them. Erazzio dove against the embankment. A spinning tile struck one of the men. The hollow knock of the impact echoed in Erazzio's ears. Black smoke rose in spots from the hull. More stones fell out of the sky.
"Against the wall! Against the wall!" he cried. Blood stained the sand over which the men ran.
"Stay close," Erazzio said. "And follow behind me."
Erazzio and his men crouched up the steps slowly, bending low until they almost crawled on all fours. Shards bounced and ricocheted about them, making the men mutter oaths in French and Italian. As they neared the top, the hail of stones dwindled to nothing. Silence descended beyond the rim. Errazio readied to charge but a rasping voice checked him.
"Sabbitini," it hissed. Erazzio gripped the stair. He knew the voice belonged to a monachoi. The hooded schema filled his mind's eye.
"Sabbitini. We await you."
A shout rang out. Screams and the tramp of boots killed further speech. Above Erazzio, steel slapped into flesh. He leapt up the last stair. Brown smoke filled the street. It stung his eyes. Ash danced to the ground like gray snow. Dead Greeks lay upon the ground. A mass of gray broke through the smoke: Giacomo.
"Where's the monk?" Erazzio said.
"They ran into the town." Giacomo looked once towards the beach, where the glow from the galley was visible. He cried and made to run past. "The ship!"
Erazzio grabbed the rim of Giacomo's breastplate. "Forget the ship. Burn the town. Smash it all and burn it to the ground. We'll teach them about fire."
The Venetians took embers from the nearest bonfire and set fire to the closest houses. Erazzio stalked among them. "You were right, Giacomo," he said. "We should have killed everything Greek that moved."
Gray shapes fled before them through the smoke. Some strayed too close and found drawn weapons to greet them. Men, women, and children. The soldiers killed them all.
"Stay together. Don't let them draw us apart."
They reached the town square. Erazzio's eyes burned like they had been rubbed with ground glass. Some of the houses had caught fire. Sparks fluttered down to the stones. Erazzio selected the passage uphill between houses. A gap appeared in the smoke long enough for him to catch sight of the church.
Giacomo took hold of his brother's shoulder. Ash smudged their faces, oily with perspiration. The heated air rippled about them.
"What if they have Greek Fire?" Giacomo said.
"Then we shall steal it, brother. We shall make it ours as we have made this island ours. As we shall make the Torch ours." Erazzio pointed his sword up the hill. "I believed subtlety would serve us best -- but that's not the way of miracles."
Behind them, the soldiers dragged a woman away from the corpse of her husband. The sound of a door shattering punctuated her screams. Above them, the church bell began to ring. Giacomo released his grip, and the two brothers marched to the church. The way was clear. Halfway to the door, they saw Tio Stefano. The priest hung there, pinioned by crude nails through his cassock. Thin rivulets of blood crawled from his ears.
"Erazzio, what manner of men are these?" Giacomo readied his Austrian-bladed axe.
"I know not, brother," Erazzio said. He checked Stefano for a pulse, found none, and gripped the door's ring. "Help me."
The two of them pulled. No longer did the bell ring above them. The door groaned open, and the Sabbitini brothers peered inside.
Dark stained the interior. Deep enough that one might breathe it inside and coat the lung. A sheen of soot broken here and there by the slit of thin windows. A Byzantine-style Christ glared down from the arch of the dome, his eyes luminous circles of pearls among the stains. A gold chain hung down the ceiling suspending the ossuary of Raikos. Beneath it, the eight monachoi waited.
"Lower your weapons, my lords." The last word dwindled into a wheeze from hooded lips. The monks bowed their heads, stepping aside to create a path straight to the ossuary. The closest remained beside it.
Brief cries echoed up from the town. Erazzio's men still waged war in the streets beneath him. He went into the church, Giacomo at the ready behind him.
"The Torch," Erazzio's said, walking down the path lined by the monks.
Giacomo took hold of the nearest of the robed figures and pulled back the hood. The face beneath was withered -- devoid of ears, lips, and hair. A lidless eye peered back at him.
"Is this the miracle you seek, Erazzio?"
The monachoi beside the ossuary unclasped the door. Intense light shone forth from the cylinder. A diamond-shape of purest color radiated out into the church.
"The Torch," Erazzio said again. He felt drawn forward, reaching out his hand. There was no heat -- only light. Shadows danced about him, cast and recast upon the walls. How close could he get to it? His palm hovered a hair's breath away from the center. He touched the light and did not burn.
Giacomo cried out, the monachoi falling upon him. He slew two of them before the others could wrest his axe from him.
Erazzio's hand grew white, pure as the Torch's fire. He wanted to show his brother. It had burned for a thousand years, yet it did not consume its source. Arms ablaze, Erazzio went to his brother who stood in the grip of the black figures. Giacomo's skin showed blisters at Erazzio's approach. The air filled with the scent of singed hair.
"A miracle," Erazzio said, his voice black and dry. Flames caressed Giacomo's head. The monks dropped to their knees before The Torch. Erazzio walked out of the church, fire in his footsteps. He passed the body of Tio Stefano and began the descent to the beach.
A light to guide the world, a miracle to make his own, the Torch stripped all else from Erazzio, consuming him as it had the monachoi.
It was the year of Our Lord 1204, nearly two months since the death of Doge Dandolo and the sack of Constantinople. Erazzio Sabbitini walked in shimmering flames, and his island burned behind him.
