I strolled awhile along the fresh rain-washed gravel paths, taking the air and watching the clouds as they broke apart and drifted eastward towards the North Sea. After a time, I sat down on a bench and dozed only a moment, it seemed to me-but I awoke to find the lowering sun had disappeared and a wind was blowing stiff and chill out of the west where darker, more ominous clouds had gathered.

They were, it seemed to me, clouds of war, shadows of the great evil rushing eastward to feed and strengthen the darkness already rampant there. The political quagmire of the European noble houses was inexorably sucking one government and power after another deeper and deeper into the ruinous morass. The fighting, which had now spread on many fronts, grew continually sharper, more brutal and vicious by the day. As yet there was no end in sight.

The splendour of the summer day was, I reflected, like our own lives upon the earth: short-lived, and bounded by darkness on every side.

It was in this sombre mood that I turned my steps towards home. By the time I reached the house, the weather had turned foul. I unlocked the front door just as the first drops of rain spattered on to the pavement behind me.

I quickly stepped inside and, as I turned to close the door behind me, my eye fell upon a small, buff-coloured envelope lying on the mat. I turned it over and saw my name neatly lettered in black ink. My heart began beating faster as I opened the envelope and saw the single word: Tonight.

CHAPTER ONE

At the pronouncement of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the bride was carried from the cathedral on a silver bed draped with cloth of gold. Alone on that wide and glittering expanse, she looked frightened, cowed, and far younger than her thirteen years. Before her went a hundred black-robed monks chanting the Gloria, followed by the stiffly dignified metropolitan in his high-crowned, ruby and ivory-beaded red satin hat; the imposing prelate carried a large silver frame containing the Sacred Mandelion: the cloth bearing the indelible image of Christ, one of Byzantium's most highly valued treasures.