Gallows Snafu

[First-person narration by Gaius Galen, here relating the event that greatly pushed the Blue and Green fans’ street rioting toward rebellion]

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My commanders Zazo, Bargas, Jacob, Lukos and Monaxius approached from different directions and feathered their gangs of about 15 men each into the throngs moving toward the Praetorium annex not far from the shore. Eleven men arrested in rioting two nights before had been moved over here at dawn from the Praetorium’s jail. Eudaemon had sentenced seven of the men to death. These executions drew the crowds from the city sensing – hoping for – trouble.

 

I had about 20 men with me, including Estrilda who easily dressed and acted like a man. Zazo and his men would join me among the crowd there; Jacob, Lukos and Monaxius held back not too far away. Flavius had said there were no specific targets to protect or attack and our orders were to be there and be ready until we heard more from him. He was there somewhere monitoring events.

 

The crowd’s excitement and undercurrent of malice enticed me. I felt like an organic part of the ill will toward order that pushed all these troublemakers along, but I fought to stay out of it and stay in control.

 

Every few minutes, a boy would tug at my cloak and relay a message from one of my lieutenants. These boys, 11 of them, were our messengers: fast, street-smart, almost invisible, cheap, and under the direction of Pawah, the Egyptian boy who had become a favorite of Tedius. We did not use them in our foray to destroy the tannery because Monaxius and I wanted to make sure Zazo and his men were reliable before we opened up the boy messengers to a possible disaster there. We needed them here. They had been training with us for a couple of weeks and knew our leaders’ faces and many of the other street soldiers’, as well as the black enamel pin in all our various hats. These boys would try to pick us out among hundreds of others.

 

We reached the Praetorium annex, which was a rectangular, two-story fortress-like structure with high walls and few windows. A crowd of some 1,000, with more flowing in by the minute, pressed up against the wood-rail barriers in front of the mounted prefect guards on the east side, where a raised wooden platform with chopping blocks and gallows was attached to the building by a walkway to the second story. On the annex’s flat roof stood about 40 archers, arrows notched, bows held down. Every horseman, bowman and guardsman tried to hide their nervousness. But the crowd sensed it. I spotted Zazo kneeling underneath the back corner of the platform, apparently unnoticed by the mounted soldiers in front of him facing us.

 

Eudaemon, bearing the contempt of authority, walked boldly from the annex to the execution platform, accompanied by a dozen guardsmen. The crowd’s voice, thick with crosstalk, died down as Eudaemon raised his arms to quiet their noise.

 

“Citizens of Constantinople,” he called out, “seven men have been found guilty of inciting riots and personally killing or directing the killing of innocent people yesterday.”

 

“No one’s innocent!” yelled someone, sending a ripple of laughter through the crowd.

 

“These men, certainly not,” said Prefect Eudaemon, and he swung the drooping right sleeve of his ermine-trimmed robe toward the seven men filing onto the platform under guard. Each one wore some form of Green or Blue marking.

 

“These disorders have grown too dangerous, too frequent, and the people of the city want order. The death of these men will help us achieve that,” said Eudaemon.

 

One fellow at the head of the crowd used a stick to prick the nostril of a horse in front of the scaffolding, causing it to rear up and throw its rider. The crowd flexed like a muscle, ready to strike something, anything.

 

Eudaemon paused for a moment, then called out, “Executioners, dispense the emperor’s justice!”

As jailers tied down four men on chopping blocks, a big man in the crowd wearing a green jacket hurled a rock at the executioner. The crowd instinctively stepped forward, but was stopped by the cry of the rock thrower who had an arrow in his shoulder – instantly the man next to him was felled by another archer. The crowd grumbled but froze, each man calculating if he would draw the next arrow by a sudden movement. Eudaemon smiled.

 

Then he nodded, and four heads toppled into baskets, the corpses jerking and giving up their blood. The crowd both cheered and moaned, and Eudaemon was quick to point downward again. Nooses were tightened around the necks of the three men left, two Greens and a Blue, positioned under the gallows beam that could accommodate five hangings. The crowd sucked in its breath as one when the executioner pulled the lever to drop the floor – and was dumbfounded when the far end of the beam came crashing down to the platform with the three men tied to it having dropped through the gallows floor. Two of them were standing on the ground, the third closer to the fixed end and higher up strangling to death, his feet kicking just inches above life.

 

The crowd cheered to raise the Devil – all of us except Brother Zazo who raced to the dangling man, saw that his neck was snapped, then cut the hangman’s ropes on the living two, the nooses still around their necks. He put an arm around each of the dazed men and called out to everyone, “God Has Saved These Men! Praise God, Praise Justinian His Servant – And Praise the Blues and the Greens Together – Together!”

 

He lifted up the stunned men’s hands as if they had just tied in a wrestling match, as several of his brothers rushed to him. Eudaemon and guards were sprinting up the ramp to the safety of the annex’s second floor, the horsemen were already under attack, and a captured spear was hurled into an archer on the roof, then another. The archers took out a few men but began to flee from the side of the roof out of sight.

 

Zazo was running away from the back of the gallows with a Blue and a Green under each arm, his fellow brothers circled around them like a turtle shell, joined by some of Lukos’ men. The young toughs in the crowd gleefully had their hidden weapons out and were thrashing into the horsemen backed up against the platform.

 

I shoved and squeezed to the back of the scaffolding and headed after Zazo and his prizes, my group of men following me. Behind us over the shouting, screams and din of the wilding came, “Praise God, Greens and Blues Saved. Greens and Blues Saved!” This building chant was belted out as the crowd turned into a mob and set about to destroy the Praetorium annex. I caught up to Zazo as he reached the nearby monastery of St. Conon, three of his bothers pounding on the door.

 

“Zazo, that was brilliant!” I said.

 

He turned to me grinning, a froth of saliva at the corner of his mouth. “The brothers of St. Conon will help us shelter these lambs God has saved.” He looked sharply at me, “We cannot abandon these men, Gaius Galen – ever.”

 

The door opened, some quick explanations were made and we were welcomed in. Zazo, his un-hanged men, a few of his brothers and I entered, leaving our others outside the door that slammed shut. Some from the crowd had also left the annex to follow the saved men. In the quiet, tiled hall that opened into a gloomy sanctuary, Zazo got on his knees and kissed the feet of the Abbot of St. Conon.