Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (45 page)

“You may have forty-three galleys,” the Afentiko said, “but will they all come if Spiridon attacks?”

“They'll have to,” Foscari said.

No challenge to the Republic's supremacy could be tolerated, not if it might reveal the city's weakness.

“Spiridon's own fleet is substantial. Fourteen galleys according to our latest information.”

“He is far from matching us on the sea.”

“And on the land? His army is said to be twenty-five thousand.”

“Of which he can transport only a fraction.”

“You didn't see the ambassador he sent. A man with burning eyes. The most terrifying thing I've ever seen.”

Foscari paused for a moment. “A djinn?” he said.

The Afentiko barked an uneasy laugh. “You've heard that rumor? It's absurd, and yet”—he shivered—“for a moment I wondered. There was something uncanny about that man.”

“There must have been,” Foscari said, “if you were so impressed by him.”

He turned as Serafina touched his arm. “I do not believe in djinn,” she said, “but having seen Spiridon's man, I am more than ever convinced that demons can walk the earth.”

Foscari considered this. “Demons or not, perhaps I should sail to Episkopi and see what His Cypriot Majesty is up to.”

Serafina's voice was low as she spoke in
Venexiàn
. “If you yourself make that voyage, you should yourself be careful.”

“Venice itself is not at war with King Spiridon.”

“Spiridon himself makes war on whomever he likes.”

It was difficult to separate the truth of King Spiridon's life from the stories he had spread about himself, but the most common story was that he was a Russian gangster named Zubov who, with many of his colleagues, had moved to Limmasol a few years before the Change. He and the other Russians had formed a hard core of survivors during the massive population crash that followed, and subsequently Zubov, under the Greek nom de guerre of Spiridon, emerged as a general leading armies of Greek Cypriots in the massacre of the Turkish Cypriots, who lived in their own enclave on the northern part of the island.

Having accomplished this holy and most Christian slaughter, Spiridon had graciously acceded to the request of his army that he become King. Since then he'd busied himself with settling his followers on the rubble of the old Turkish republic, eliminating his remaining enemies among the Greeks, and making threats against his neighbors.

And, if Serafina was to be believed, recruiting demons.

“And you've prepared against this threat?”

“Our towns are fortified,” said the Afentiko. “The militia drills regularly. But none of them have ever fought a war, and we have no professional soldiers.”

“Would you accept Venetian soldiers in Rhodes?”

The Afentiko considered this. “Yes,” he said. “It would hearten the people.”

Foscari concealed the elation that burned in his veins.

“I will send a message to Venice,” he said, “and see what the Council and the President have to say.”

*   *   *

One of Foscari's fast dispatch boats was sent to Venice. Proceeding under sail, with its sixteen oars providing power when the wind was not favorable, and swapping in a fresh set of oarsmen at each stop, Foscari reckoned the journey would take ten to fourteen days. Since he knew what the Council's decision would be once the message arrived, he was reasonably easy about the outcome.

Venice would take any steps necessary to secure Rhodes and prevent Spiridon, or anyone else, from threatening Venetian hegemony. More ships, plus Croatian and Albanian mercenaries, would soon arrive to buttress the island's defense.

Foscari settled into a routine of pleasant activity. He dined with the Archbishop, the President, the Prime Minister, prominent citizens, and the island's small Venetian community. He toured the island, and inspected the local militia and the fortifications. He drilled his ships every other day, and integrated the Afentiko's small fleet into his maneuvers. He played football with young Nikolaos in the courtyard of the Grand Master's Palace, and told the boy of Unione Venezia's great victories over the wretched, stumbling teams of the Umbrian League.

He didn't take his ships to Episkopi to look into the port for Spiridon's ships. The Afentiko had agreed to the arrival of Venetian soldiers, and Foscari wanted to be on hand to prevent Kanellis from changing his mind.

Two weeks after his arrival, Foscari invited the Afentiko to dine aboard his flagship. He spread Venetian and Rhodian banners and flags, and brought aboard cold mezedes, plus stews and ragouts that could be kept warm at the cook's station till needed. Two-thirds of the rowers were given leave ashore, along with the marines, and once out of the harbor the
Barbarigo
traveled under sail alone while the oarsmen gathered forward, by the cook's station, for their own meal.

Foscari saw the barometer was falling. This might be the last fine day for a while, his last opportunity to offer hospitality to the Afentiko.

Foscari shared a table with the Afentiko right aft, shaded by the poop awning. The table itself, and the pair of carved high-backed chairs, had been borrowed from a local Venetian merchant.

Long silver clouds scudded on the western horizon. The sea was so bright and alive with reflections that it looked as if the sun had scattered gold dust on the waters. Water splashed under the counter, and the lateen sails formed brilliant crescents overhead. The scent of the pure sea breeze made Foscari's nerves tingle.

Foscari sipped wine from his Murano goblet, nibbled mezedes, talked with the Afentiko about their business: about the island's preparedness, about where the Venetian soldiers would be garrisoned.

And he thought about poison.

It was unfortunate, he reflected, that Rhodes was simply too small to survive on its own. It had to be incorporated into something larger, either the Venetian empire or the kingdom of Spiridon.

Consider the choice: Spiridon in his purple robes, a crazy butcher, a genocide, and an unpredictable, vindictive, murderous master.

Or Venice, which wanted only money and power.

Given all that, Foscari knew how he would choose, were he the people of Rhodes.

Not that he was prepared to offer Rhodes the choice. The Council had provided Foscari with a poison, made from the castor bean, that would kill the victim in three to five days, and would appear at first to be a bad case of influenza, maybe one that degenerated into pneumonia. There was no way to diagnose the poison, no way to connect Foscari to the death, taking place as it would several days after the administration of the toxin.

After which Venice would act to protect the Afentiko's Venetian wife and children.

Serafina might rule the island in place of her husband—with a staff of Venetian advisors, of course—or it might be necessary to take the whole family under Venetian protection, to be sent back to Venice for their own safety. Another husband might eventually be found for Serafina, but her children would be sent to convents, where they would remain for the rest of their days.

There could be no question of their being given a chance to have children of their own. The Republic would not countenance a Greek dynasty taking root in Rhodes. The Afentiko's line would die with his children.

The main question was the matter of timing. It might be better for the Afentiko to die after the Venetian troops had already landed and were in a position to intervene. But then again, such a death might be seen as too convenient for the Venetians.

Whereas now the death would create confusion and fear, a situation that would be resolved by the arrival of Venetian reinforcements. And Foscari judged that his own sailors and marines could secure the city if necessary.

It was sad, of course, that the Afentiko had to die. Foscari liked him. He was a remarkable man, and he'd been a loyal ally of Venice during a period when the Republic was weak and needed a bulwark on its eastern flank. But now Venice was ready for another round of expansion, and a sovereign Rhodes would just get in the way.

The Venetian State, the same State that had decreed the Black Annunciation, required a death, and Giustinian Foscari was a servant of the State. The State had saved him, raised him, trained him, and given him purpose. He would put his personal feelings aside and act as the State required.

Foscari turned to the Afentiko. “Loukas,” he said. “I have a special bottle of wine I've been saving, a Bardolino blended with a very fine Rondinella. It would be splendid on such a lovely afternoon, don't you think?”

The Afentiko smiled. “I will take the
ammiraglio's
recommendation.”

Foscari went to his cabin for the bottle, returned, opened it, and poured equal measures into the Murano goblets from which they'd been drinking all afternoon. The poison fell easily into the Afentiko's glass from the ring on Foscari's second finger—poison rings carried with them an absurd air of melodrama, but they worked.

Foscari felt his heart beating fast as he raised his glass in a toast. But the Afentiko wasn't returning his gaze, but instead was looking aft, over the taffrail.

“Is that my barge?” he asked.

Foscari spun and pulled the old Fujinon 10x50 binoculars from their waterproof case.

Yes, the Afentiko's barge was flying toward them, its lugsail set and its oars thrashing the water white.

A few strides brought Foscari to the break of the poop, where he began shouting orders to the crew. Oarsmen ran to their stations. The helm went up, the lateen sails rolled around their masts as the galley wore around, and the
Barbarigo
pitched as the bow bit into the waves from a new angle. The oilskin seals were removed from the row ports and the sweeps deployed.

Once the sweeps bit the water,
Barbarigo
was within hailing distance of the barge within minutes.

“War!” came the cry. “Spiridon's landed at Lindos!”

Foscari clenched his teeth and turned to see the Afentiko looming over the stern rail, a fierce look on his bearded face. He held the Murano glass in his big, clenched fist.

Alarm clattered in Foscari at the sight. He took a step toward Kanellis, snatched the glass from him, and hurled it along with his own glass into the sea.

“This isn't the time for wine!” he shouted. “This is the time for fighting!”

The Afentiko looked at him in surprise, and then amusement crossed his face.

“You Latins!” he said in his broken English. “You're such drama queens!”

*   *   *

It was too late in the afternoon to send the fleet south to Lindos, a port town about sixty kilometers south of Rhodes City. The town itself was assumed to be holding out: there would have been plenty of warning as the Cypriot fleet rolled over the horizon, and the town featured a massive thick-walled acropolis built, like the Grand Master's Palace, by the Knights of St. John. Foscari had inspected the fortifications only the previous week, and the militia and the stored provisions seemed perfectly adequate to hold such a strong place.

Foscari sent his fast dispatch boat west at nightfall, with instructions to head straight for the Corinth Canal to warn the Venetian relief force. Plans were made to row to the aid of the town next morning. The allied galleys were made ready, their masts and sails taken down and stowed ashore, and a full complement of catapults and other large weapons set up on board.

The Venetian galleys also set up galleries amidships, a kind of raised bridge running athwart the vessel at its midpoint. These were stations for the marines, who could fire crossbows and ballistas down into enemy ships.

But there was one Rhodian ship still under repair. “I've accelerated the work on the
Leo Gabalas
,” the Afentiko told Foscari. “But the earliest the ship can touch water is two days from now.”

“We'll fight without it,” Foscari shrugged. He had confidence in his squadron, in his men.

If he could defeat the enemy ships, he thought, he'd strand a large part of Spiridon's army onshore where they could be trapped and killed, and probably capture a large number of his transports as well.

But as it turned out the allies were unable to go to the relief of Lindos the next day. As the barometer had predicted, the weather turned: a storm blew up overnight, a northerly gale battering the mole and sending spurts of white water shooting over the jetty and up the walls of Fort St. Nicholas.

Because they were designed to be propelled by human muscle, and to be wrestled by their crew onto a beach at night, galleys were light, fragile craft, and did not fare well in storms. Foscari would not risk the island's defense by defying the weather, and he worried that his small dispatch vessel, set out into the teeth of the gale, would be overwhelmed.

Over the next three days the wind shifted easterly, then south. Rain darkened the walls of the city. Foscari could only hope the Cypriot fleet was being hammered on an iron shore.

No such luck: on the fourth morning, the rising sun broke through storm clouds to spread a bloodred stain on the water and to illuminate enemy ships approaching. King Spiridon's navy came on in a long line: sixteen galleys, two more than the Afentiko's information had suggested.

Foscari, using his binoculars from the battlements of Fort St. Nicholas, saw that they were a heterogeneous group, built—like the Afentiko's fleet—from a variety of designs. Some had a single bank of oars, some double, some triple. Some, like the Venetian ships, carried their rowers inboard the hull; others, like the ships of ancient Athens, had a very narrow hull with outriggers staged out from the bulwarks to house the oarsmen. Some, like the Venetians, carried a spur jutting out from the prow, just at the right height to smash through the bulwarks and tear a red swath through enemy rowers. Others, judging from the curl of white water at the bow, deployed an underwater ram.

Whatever their design, the ships were extravagantly painted: greens, blues, crimson, and gold leaf. It was as if the circus had come to town. The dyes alone must have cost a fortune, let alone the gold.