And the Rest Is History(98)



Until we got there and I saw for myself what we were dealing with.





As I’ve said on many occasions, we’re historians. History is our business. Show me any major historical event and I’ll point to a couple of badly-dressed misfits muttering to themselves and slowly rotating through 360 degrees in an effort to get everything safely recorded before being trampled, shot, covered in boiling oil, executed as spies, or catching something unpleasant. You may not have noticed, but although we do have an enormous amount of enthusiasm for our job, sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan.

This doesn’t mean, that our enthusiasm encompasses all of History. While we all have our wish lists, many of us have whatever the opposite of a wish list is. Things, people, places we definitely don’t want to see.

For Peterson, it’s the execution of Charles I. He gets very upset about it. No one knows why. Dr Bairstow respects this and should we ever jump to that particular event, it is clearly understood that Peterson will not be included.

I myself have two events on my list. The first is the murder of the scholar Hypatia, mathematician and philosopher. She was head of the Neoplatonic School of Alexandria. Dragged from her chariot, she was stripped and flayed alive by Christian zealots – an unfortunate victim of the power struggle between Orestes, Prefect of Egypt, and Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. It is argued that her death marked the end of classical antiquity.

The second event is the Fourth Crusade. The Sack of Constantinople, April 1204. If our people were indeed here, then they were in some very serious trouble. It’s well known that the Crusaders fell on the city, looting, burning, raping and murdering. Over three days, they stripped the city of everything of value – that’s how the famous bronze horses ended up in St Mark’s Square, Venice. Countless irreplaceable treasures were broken up or melted down only for their material worth. The wonderful statue of Heracles, made by the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, Lysippos himself, was melted down for its bronze. The Library was burned. Sanctuaries looted. Nuns raped. Thousands upon thousands of people were killed, raped or mutilated. For three days, the Frankish Crusaders, mad for blood and gold, and having, as they thought, a free pass from the Pope to do as they pleased, turned the city into a living hell. The Crusaders’ treatment of Constantinople and its people would shatter the Christian church. The Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches were irrevocably sundered. The city would never recover its former glory.

And somewhere, in all this maelstrom of fire and blood, death and destruction was one small pod and its probably critically injured crew. Even if they’d survived the blast (which they probably hadn’t), and the crash landing (which they probably hadn’t), they’d be in no state to defend themselves against whatever was going on around them.

We could only hope we got to them before the invading Crusaders did.



I know we landed in the vicinity of the church of Hagia Sofia because the coordinates said so but visibility was so poor we could have been anywhere.

We were in an open space at the end of a narrow street with tiny houses on either side. This must be an area of small artisans. Each little house had a let-down front on which goods could be displayed. Normally, this street would be bustling with people going about their business: women shopping, men sitting outside their shops talking to each other, mothers shouting for or at their children, dogs sniffing around – all the sights and sounds of everyday life.

Today, that life was gone; for many people, gone for ever. It looked as if a tornado had been through the place. Gone were the carpenters, bread makers, tanners and leather workers, the metal workers, the masons. Broken pottery lay everywhere. A hand spindle lay abandoned nearby, still with tufts of sheep’s wool. Looters had already been through the place. Overturned wicker baskets spilled their contents across the street. The table fronts on which the traders would display their wares were broken off, or hanging at crazy angles. There were signs that people’s pathetic possessions had been dragged out into the street, kicked around for anything of value and then abandoned.

The air was so thick with smoke from burning buildings that even the looming presence of Hagia Sofia was lost in the murk. And given what the Crusaders were getting up to inside, it wasn’t a place where anyone sensible would want to be.

In addition to the big screen over the console, this pod had screens on every wall, all of them showing different viewpoints, and none of them good. Even as I stared at the one closest to me, a group of people burst from the smoke, scorched, choking, dishevelled and desperate, running for their lives. They streamed past the pod, so terrified, so frantic, that I doubt they even saw us. Their open mouths showed red in their smoke-blackened faces. Lost children screamed in fear and panic, holding out their arms to be picked up and comforted. By anyone.

Moments later, in hot pursuit, half a dozen men, their armour splattered with blood, swords drawn, erupted from the same smoke.

They talk about crowd mentality. How – as part of a crowd – people will do things they wouldn’t dream of normally. Terrible things. Looting. Rape. Torture. Murder. Things they would never have thought themselves capable of. Often, afterwards, they are horrified at their actions. They can’t believe what they’ve done. They’re distraught and ashamed. But here’s the thing. That’s afterwards. No matter how sorry they are afterwards, somehow it never stops them committing those atrocities in the first place.

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