A Place Called Armageddon Read Online Free Page A

sorceress’s first prophecy had already come true. Then, as he lowered the body to the ground, he realised that was wrong.
    She hadn’t seen this. She’d ordered it.
    I will watch out for this sorceress, he thought.
    The other man leaned down, and wiped his blade on the dead man’s cloak. ‘A throat cut. A sacrifice made,’ Mehmet said, smiling. ‘Now, Hamza, let us go and cut the throat of a city. Let us go to Constantinople.’

– TWO –

Prayers
    Genoa, Italy
2 November 1452
     
    It was hard to find God in Genoa.
    At least, it had become hard for her. Sofia was sure the Genoese managed it. It had to be her fault. Her weakness.
    The master who had painted the ikons in her wooden altar was not weak. His belief shone in his dazzling brushstrokes, in those depicted – Madonna and the Infant Christ. Saints either side venerated the holy pair. The paintings had always inspired her, centred her, joined her to the Divine. Yet now she knelt before them mouthing words, inhaling incense, seeking union, feeling … nothing. Because she kept hearing her son’s laugh, her daughter’s cry. She’d turn away from God to the door – and remember that they weren’t there. Half a year since her husband had taken her away from Constantinople. Half a year, and they were growing and changing beyond her sight.
    Her husband. Sofia heard him moving around the other room, awake at last. He had come in after dawn, and had collapsed, wine-heavy, onto the bed beside her. She’d thought to leave him, try and pray, but he had pulled her back and taken her, which he had not done in months. Taken her swiftly, caring nothing for her. After he’d collapsed immediately into sleep, she’d managed to slide from beneath him, gone to her house altar, knelt, sought God. She had not found Him.
    Yet. Perhaps it was a demon that afflicted her? There was one, the Demon of Midday, who brought this sluggish despair. Reaching beneath into her robes, she pulled out her enkolpia . It was an amulet her mother had given her, a picture of St Demetrios worked in lapis lazuli. Lifting it to her forehead, she closed her eyes and tried to pray.
    ‘Do you beseech God for our coupling to give us another child?’
    Theon’s voice startled her. She hadn’t heard the door open. He was standing in the doorway, already half dressed in his under robe and socks. She rose, letting the amulet fall against her breast. ‘I will fetch you food,’ she said, moving to the shelves where provisions were kept.
    ‘I want nothing. Maybe some water. I must go out.’
    ‘Then I will bring you water,’ she said. It was on the balcony off the bedroom. At home, a snap of fingers would have summoned three servants to do her bidding. Here, one sullen girl came by later in the day, to cook and clean. Sofia tried to go past him in the doorway as she spoke, but he took her arm, preventing her. ‘You did not answer me,’ he said.
    What was his question? The Demon of Midday still held her in its thrall. Oh, something about another child. ‘If it is God’s will,’ she said, and tried again to move past him.
    He did not let her. ‘Hasn’t man something to do with it?’ he asked, his grip tightening. ‘Shall we plant more seeds and see?’ She was never good at hiding her feelings. He must have noted her revulsion, because he smiled, released her.
    She dipped the ladle into the amphora and took her time filling a water jug. She needed to think. What was this talk of children? He hardly ever touched her. She knew he had other women. She did not care. What did he need her for?
    She replaced the ladle on its hook. He could hire a whore to fetch his water, cater to all his needs. She had served the small purpose he had brought her to Genoa for in the first week, so perhaps … perhaps he would let her go home. Where her city, her children and, she hoped, God awaited her.
    He was standing by their scrap of mirror, tidying his beard with a blade. She put the jug beside him, went to the