Constantine looked to Giustiniani, the other reason the city had survived for as long as it had. “You?”
Giustiniani shook his head. “If Halil is right, all we need to do is hold on for a little longer and Mehmed will be forced to leave. He may even lose the throne.” After a pause, Giustiniani looked at the floor. “But I cannot promise we can hold on for even a day more. We have fewer than half of the forces we started with. The men are hungry and weary and frightened. The Venetians want to leave. My men do, too. I will not let them, but it may come to a point where I can no longer prevent them. With one victory, they could topple us—or with one victory, we could have enough momentum to sustain ourselves. We are balanced on the edge of a knife. I do not know whom the knife will cut. The choice is yours.”
Constantine sat, his broad shoulders sloping as he picked up a quill and stroked the length of it. “I cannot do it,” he said. Radu leaned heavily against the wall, all hope extinguished. “I will send Halil with an offer of peace. We will increase our tribute, and give the sultan the land under the Rumeli Hisari. We will give him Orhan, too, and abandon all attempts at destabilizing his throne.”
Constantine was willing to sacrifice Orhan, a man he had used to manipulate the Ottomans for decades, even though Orhan had chosen to stay and fight. He would sacrifice Orhan, but not his pride. Not his throne. Radu shook his head, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “Mehmed will not accept.”
“I know. But I cannot abandon my city. I am sorry, my friends. I will fight until my last breath before I will see Ottoman flags in this palace and hear their call to prayer from the Hagia Sophia. It is in God’s hands now.”
But which god? Radu thought. With so many men on both sides sending up so many prayers, how could any god sift through the noise?
That night, the air was sweet with the promise of summer around the corner. The wind had blown strong from the horn, clearing the smoke from the city for once. Radu and Cyprian sat on the Blachernae Palace wall, facing the Hagia Sophia. Though they had not discussed it, neither man had gone to his scheduled position at the wall after leaving Constantine. They had ended up out here, silent, side by side.
It was almost quiet enough to pretend the world was not ending around them.
“The moon begins waning tonight,” Cyprian said.
Radu remembered the prophecy that the city could not be taken on a waxing moon. “Do you believe in that one?”
“I believe in very little these days.”
Radu looked toward the Hagia Sophia, where the full moon would rise over the city. A full circle of gold, like their coins, the moon was a protector of the city along with the Virgin Mary. Would the waning finally shift the tide of war?
Next to him, Cyprian sat up straight, a sharp intake of breath like a hiss puncturing the quiet of the night. In place of the full moon rising over the Hagia Sophia, there was only a sliver of a crescent moon.
The crescent moon of Islam.
“How is this possible?” Cyprian whispered.
Radu shook his head in disbelief. The moon was full tonight—had to be full tonight. But slowly lifting itself above the city’s holiest building, the moon remained a crescent. The dark part was not as dark as normal, but rather a deep red. Stained like blood.
For hours Radu and Cyprian watched as the crescent moon hung over the city, promising an end to everything. Wails and cries from the streets drifted on the sweet breeze. For once the church bells did not ring warning. What could bells do against the moon? Finally, agonizingly slowly, the moon returned to the fullness it should have had all along.
“I might believe in prophecies now,” Cyprian said in awe and wonder. “But I do not think I like this one.”
Radu wondered what it must have been like to see the moon in the Ottoman camps. Surely Mehmed would have capitalized on it, claiming it as a prophecy of victory, even as the citizens of Constantinople saw it as a portent of doom.
It was just the moon. The moon did not take sides. But the blood-washed expanse of the Byzantine full moon seemed to promise otherwise.
They spent the night on the palace wall, not moving. Sometime in the small hours of the morning, clouds rolled in, obscuring the moon. “Where were you when we could have used you?” Cyprian muttered.
Dawn dragged itself free from sludge of night, bringing with it a smattering of rain and the promise of more to come. After Radu prayed in his heart, they began to walk toward a gate that would lead them to the wall over the Lycus River.
“Oh, hell.” Cyprian cringed. “Oh, damn, I am going to be damned for swearing about this.” They were near the monastery they had broken into that housed the Hodegetria. A massive crowd had gathered outside. Priests were already swinging censers, chanting and singing the liturgy. More people came in the street behind Radu and Cyprian, blocking them in.
“See if you can push through,” Cyprian said. “They are going to take the Hodegetria around the walls. If we get stuck in the middle, we will be trapped for hours.”
A team of men exited the monastery, the pallet lifted onto their shoulders. One of them nearly lost his grip, struggling to keep hold. Radu remembered Nazira wiping her hands clean of grease—on the poles of the icon.
“God’s wounds,” he whispered, fighting an urge to laugh born of nerves and exhaustion.
Another man’s hands slipped. He adjusted quickly, lifting the icon higher. A crossbearer in front began walking, followed by the priests. Men, women, and children surrounded them, all barefoot. A man near the front cried out in a voice loud enough to be heard over the low rumbling of thunder.
“Do thou save thy city, as thou knowest and willest! We put thee forward as our arms, our rampart, our shield, our general!”
Radu leaned close to Cyprian. “Someone should tell Giustiniani he has been replaced by a centuries-old painting.”
Cyprian snorted, covering his laugh behind a hand.
The man continued. “Do thou fight for our people!”
“Do you think she will take our place at the wall?” Cyprian whispered.
Radu laughed. A man nearby gave them a furious glare, crossing himself.
“We are going to hell for blasphemy,” Cyprian said.
“We are already in hell,” Radu said, shrugging. “And with so much company.” They tried to edge away from the crowd, but the street was narrow and clogged with people. The two men were carried forward in the surge of religious zeal, pushed along a seemingly random path.
“There!” Radu said, pointing to a narrow alley. If they could duck into it, they could wait until the crowd had passed and then backtrack.
Someone cried out in horror from the front. The Hodegetria was slipping. Though the men carrying it scram bled to counter its momentum, they could not get a good grip on the poles. The icon, the holiest artifact in the city, slid off into a thick patch of mud.
Everyone was silent for a few disbelieving heartbeats. Then the men sprang into action, trying to lift it. Though it was only a painting and there were several men, they could not seem to pull it up. The earth had decided to reclaim the Virgin Mary and would not relinquish her.
Several children started crying, their mothers doing nothing to shush them. A murmur like a tiny earthquake rolled through the crowd. Whispers of doom, damnation, the Virgin abandoning them. Of God judging them and deeming them unclean.
Radu was half tempted to tell them God had nothing to do with this—it had been a young woman with grease on her hands and sorrow in her heart. But it would do no good.