The Religion (8 page)

It was thus that his dealings with the Knights of Malta had begun, when he'd seen with his own eyes from the Unkapani quay of the Stambouli shore the raw timber keels of Suleiman's new fleet, and had realized that such intelligence might make him and Sabato Svi wealthy men.

They'd embarked from Old Stambouli that very night, Sabato for Venice to broker a supply of powder and arms, and Tannhauser for Messina to lease the warehouse, and thence on to Malta to treat with the Religion. The priceless advance news of Suleiman's fleet he gave them for free, to establish his bona fides and to secure a lucrative contract to supply them with arms. "War is a river of gold," he'd promised Sabato, "and we will stand with buckets on its bank." And so it was, for the Religion's appetite for gunpowder, cannon, and ball had proved insatiable, and with rich lands all over Catholic Europe their pockets were deep.

"My information," Tannhauser said, to Sabato Svi, "is that we're rich
and getting richer whether the French put pepper in their soup or sprinkle it over their privities for the pox."

Sabato laughed, with the infuriating cackle he inflicted on those he had bested. Dana bumped her haunch into Tannhauser's shoulder, but the pleasures of her skirt had been soured. With a gesture he sent her away and she acquiesced with another rancorous glare at Sabato Svi. Tannhauser watched her hips swing out of sight then turned and planted a forefinger on the tabletop.

"You ask me to spend two months at sea when the bloodiest contest of arms in the memory of the living is about to take place on our doorstep."

"So now we come to the nub. Rather than advance our station, you'd sit prattling with the wine swillers and sifting gossip from the docks." Sabato tossed his head at the scurvy entourage crowding the trestles. "You've spent so much time with these swinish guzzlers you're taking on their virtues."

"Peace!" said Tannhauser, without effect.

"The arms trade has been good but the cannon won't roar forever. We own little property. We own no land. We own no ships." Sabato waved a contemptuous hand at the rafters. "This is not rich. This is merely the chance to become so-a chance to dream."

"I have no great faith in dreaming," said Tannhauser. His last dream had been to forge a blade that his father might be proud of, and his father had never seen it. That dream had left him with an emptiness he'd never been able to replenish. He said, "We will talk no more of pepper, at least for today."

Sabato caught his change of mood and placed a hand on Tannhauser's thickened forearm and squeezed. "Melancholy doesn't suit you. And it's bad for the liver-like the air in this filthy hole. Let's take a ride to Palermo and see what profitable mischief we might raise."

Tannhauser clapped his own hand on top of Sabato's and grinned. "You damnable Jew," he said. "You'll have me sweating on the Greek's ship within a week. And you know it."

Tannhauser looked up as the open double doorway fell dark and a hulking silhouette extinguished the light. It was Bors of Carlisle, de facto manager of the tavern and the last of the unlikely trinity that kept the Oracle afloat. Earlier that morning, during their daily training session, Tannhauser had caught him on the cheekbone with the pommel of his
sword. Bors had made no complaint, but his blunder hadn't left him in the gentlest of moods and the indigo lump beneath his eye was plain to see. On the weighing scale at the customs house, Bors had tipped the balance at twenty stones, much of it packed into his thighs, arms, and chest. Since his face appeared to have seen use as a smith's anvil, the bruise didn't seem out of place, yet as he barged into the tavern he heard some slighting reference to the fresh blemish. Worse still, it was followed by a reckless round of drunken laughter. Without breaking his stride, Bors swung by the offender and punched him in the neck with a colossal fist. His victim tumbled, choking, among his fellows and Bors continued across the room to take his habitual place at Tannhauser's left hand. As he did so, Dana set down a jug and his personal drinking cup.

The cup had been artfully fashioned from a human skull. Bors filled the skull with wine and drained it and filled it again, then in a belated fit of manners filled Tannhauser's beaker with what little remained. He tossed the jug back to Dana and she went to recharge it. Bors had iron-gray hair and the advance of baldness was offset by enormous eyebrows, a fine beard, and the wiry tufts that curled down from his nostrils. He nodded to Sabato Svi and turned to Tannhauser.

"A red ship has docked," said Bors, "at the Wharf of the Hospitallers."

"You see?" said Tannhauser to Sabato. "The Religion's iron is yet hot. The gold rolls in."

Bors continued: "I've had Gasparo load the wagons and saddle our mounts." He looked at Sabato Svi. "Would you have him saddle yours?"

Sabato shook his head. "The Religion's money is welcome but they regard me as one of the murderers of their Christ."

"They are holy men of the Baptist," countered Bors and crossed himself.

"The slave pens of the Religion groan with Levantine Jews whose prayers are for the Turks-as are my prayers, too," said Sabato Svi. "The rumor's already afoot that the Jews of Istanbul have financed the invasion, and while it's false-as such libels always are-I wish it were so. When Malta falls every Jew alive will praise God."

"Since they're all bound for Hell, let them praise whoever they wish."

Sabato looked at Tannhauser. "I've ransomed two Alexandrian captives myself-hence Moshe Mosseri's good favor."

"You've been content to trade weapons for the knights' gold," observed Bors.

"I'm more than happy to profit before they're wiped out," Sabato replied. "What kind of fanatics would die for a scorched rock?"

"They've gathered there to determine the Will of God, by a noble contest of arms," corrected Bors. "And if we don't fight the Moslems in Malta we'll one day have to fight them in Paris, for the conquest of the world is their grand plan."

"We?" said Sabato Svi.

"Your time will come too, believe me," said Bors. "Furthermore, the Knights have assembled the most doughty bevy of manslayers anyone's ever seen in one place." He looked at Tannhauser. "They will harrow Hell on that island-and you and I are not among them to test our mettle." He clenched a barrel-shaped fist in anguish. "It's a violation of the natural order."

"Mattias has made an end with killing and war. I thought you had too."

Bors ignored Sabato and scowled like a gigantic infant. "This broil will make Saint Quentin seem like May Day capers."

"No," said Tannhauser. "Like two old ladies lighting votive candles in church."

"Then you agree!" said Bors, hope rising in his breast. "And this red ship will be our last chance to play our part. Let's pack our war chests and load them on the wagons now. Destiny calls. Don't tell me you can't hear it."

Tannhauser shifted, for the blood was up in his spine too, and the reproach in Bors's eyes was hard to meet. In Sabato's face, by contrast, he saw the horror of seeing their plans collapse wholesale. Tannhauser toyed with his ring, a cube of Russian gold with a hole bored through its center. Its weight lent him wisdom.

"Bors," he said, "you're my oldest and most steadfast companion. But we three contracted to become rich men together and such we are becoming and so we have done. Whether we rise or fall, it's battle of a different sort we're engaged in now. Remember the motto you coined for us,
Usque ad finem
. Until the End. Until the very end."

Bors concealed his thoughts behind the upraised skull cup of wine.

"However," continued Tannhauser, "the English langue would welcome you with a huzzah. If you want to seize this last occasion to go, then go. No one here will think you false."

Tannhauser looked into Bors's eyes: gray with a nimbus of yellow
around the iris and set in puckered nests of scarred and wrinkled skin. If Bors did choose to join the war of the Cross against the Crescent, Tannhauser would sail with him. Bors did not know this, for he wasn't the kind of man to expect any sacrifice on his behalf, but Sabato knew all too keenly and he waited with baited breath. Dana brought a fresh jug, well aware that her charms were rendered impotent by this conference. Bors gave a blunt growl and refilled his cup.

"Perhaps it is no coincidence," said Bors, "that I'm the only uncircumcised man sitting at this table."

"That disharmony, at least, could be corrected," said Tannhauser.

"You'd have to cut my head off first."

"Both of which procedures could only improve your humor," said Tannhauser. "Come now, give us a decision, man. Are you with us or with the fanatics?"

"As you say, we are contracted together, in the rise or in the fall either one," grumbled Bors. He raised his wine. "Until the bitter end."

Sabato Svi blew his cheeks with relief.

Tannhauser stood up. "Let's go and peddle our wares."

In his chamber Tannhauser changed into a burgundy-red silk doublet banded in diagonals of gold. He buckled on his sword, a Julian del Rey with a leopard's head pommel in silver, and scraped a hand across his stubble in lieu of a shave. He had no mirror but was confident that he'd cut the grandest figure on the waterfront. Bors called his name, and an obscene jibe, from the street below and Tannhauser went to join him.

Eight two-wheeled oxcarts waited outside, the great beasts stoic in the sun. The carts were loaded with gunpowder, brass cannonballs, willow charcoal, and pigs of lead. Bors sat his bay with impatience while Gasparo held Buraq by his reins.

Tannhauser said, "Gasparo, how goes the day?"

Gasparo was a sturdy youth of sixteen, shy but loyal to a fault. He grinned for answer, abashed at the honor of being asked. Tannhauser clapped him on the back and turned to Buraq, whose affection filled him at once with an infinite joy. Buraq was a Teke Turkmen from the oasis of Akhal, a breed that the ancients considered sacred and called Nisaean. Genghis Khan had ridden such a horse. The swiftest, the strongest, the most graceful. He held his head high and with inborn majesty. His coat
was the color of a newly minted gold coin. His tail and short, tufted mane were the color of wheat. Tannhauser fed him on mutton fat and barley and would have housed him in the Oracle had his partners let him. Buraq dipped his Roman nose and Tannhauser caressed him.

"Call him the most beautiful," he said and Buraq snorted and tossed his long neck.

Tannhauser mounted and as always felt at once like a Caesar. Buraq needed no bit, so lightly did he respond. The devotion of horse and rider was complete. Buraq moved off as if the whole expedition was his idea and the drivers cracked their whips and the oxen strained in the traces and with the riders in the lead the wagon train began its procession through the harbor.

If Sicily as a whole was uncongenial to those of nonconformist temper, Messina, which through millennia had known conquerors by the dozen, was open to foreigners, rogues, and entrepreneurs of every stripe. It was an independent republic, as populous as Rome, and paid the latest-Spanish-invaders presently stripping the island to the bone as little mind as it had paid the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, and all the rest. It was turbulent and rich, and with the sanctuary of Calabria only two miles across the straits, it harbored the lawless high and low in enormous numbers. The governor looted more for the Spanish Crown in a single year than the rest of the island yielded up in five. On the Church's part, the Holy Inquisition formed a veritable legion of kidnappers, killers, and thieves, and numbered in its ranks knights, barons, merchants, artisans, criminals of every kind, and, it went without saying, the bulk of the civil police force. As a place for a man such as Tannhauser to make his fortune, it had no equal.

The bay of Messina formed a perfect sickle-shaped harbor, protected by fortified jetties and the cannon of the monumental arsenal that commanded the sea. Behind it stood the old walled city itself, the outlines of its towers and campanili warping in the noontide heat. The vast docks were forested with masts and spars and reefed sails, and through the sparkling light that bounced up from the water, barges stacked with baskets and bales plied the strand. Apart from a sprinkle of fishing boats and coasters, and a Spanish galleass patrolling out in the offing, the sea beyond was still, for most mariners were waiting out these dangerous days until the Grande Turke's intentions were better known.

The Wharf of the Knights Hospitaller was half a league distant from
the Oracle and on their way Tannhauser and his entourage clattered over the cobbles past chandlers and ropewalks, spice magazines and granaries, bordellos and money changers and drinking dens similar to their own. They rode past towering cargo cranes powered by slaves inside the rims of giant treadle wheels, and past careened galleys stretched out amid the smell of oakum and pitch; past food vendors roasting tripes and gambrels festooned with the carcasses of fresh-skinned lambs; past street cleaners shoveling excrement into reeking fly-blown carts; past limbless beggars and barefoot urchins and mendicants pleading for alms; past women arguing prices with stall holders; past bands of swaggering
bravi
with their sneers and hidden knives; past a thousand cursing voices and a thousand breaking backs. The colossal scale of the enterprise, which abounded for as far as his eye could see, reminded Tannhauser that Sabato Svi was right: they were not yet rich enough. He resolved to pay his respects to Dimitrianos on the way home and secure some decent rations for the voyage.