The Venetian Contract (13 page)

She nodded, smiling brightly, though in truth she could not believe that the Sultan would make any such provision. The men aboard
Il Cavaliere
were, surely, as expendable to him as Death himself had been, and every moment they spent in these waters put them in further danger.

Feyra took these unhappy reflections back to the porthole. She wanted to see Venice recede, so they could be gone. The city held no beauty for her: her part in the terrible fate that awaited it made it a place of horror. She vowed, once she was home, never to leave Constantinople again. She would never come back here, never. Even the word ‘Venice’ was hateful to her; with its sharp syllables that sliced like a knife and hissed like a snake. She never wanted to look upon the winged lion again. He was a monster, and every league of sea that paid out between her and his dominion was a blessing.

But instead of cleaving the open seas, the ship was hugging a dun spit of land to the north of the city. There were few houses here that matched the opulent glory of what she had seen around that great square, and the brickwork was simpler, rougher; brown and speckled as a hen’s egg. Here and there were ruins too, making gaps in the skyline like missing teeth, areas of grassy wasteland between. By one such wilderness the ship came aside.

Feyra had learnt to recognize the drop of the anchor and the lurch and halt of the ship, but still did not comprehend. Why would they stop now? Why not make haste home as swiftly as they could? What more business did they have here?

She sat by her father again and took his hand. The rain had abated and all was quiet.

Too quiet.

Quiet enough for her to hear the turn of the little brass key in the lock of the night cabin. She stood, afraid, as the door opened and a half dozen of the Janissaries filed in, dressed once more in their black face masks.

No one spoke, but one man took her arm and pulled her to the side. Four others took a rope at each corner of her father’s bed and drew their scimitars with a metallic ringing. For a dreadful moment she thought they would execute him on the spot, but then each of the quartet laid hold of a rope and cut it cleanly, carrying the bed to the door like a litter.

Feyra counselled herself: they were loyal men who would follow the code of shipboard. Timurhan, even if incapacitated, was still their captain. Her captor pulled her along in the wake of the procession. ‘Where are you taking my father?’ she asked. But there was no reply from beneath the black mask.

Once on land, she could see their position – they were in the lee of the land mass, sheltered from the winds that whipped the seaboard, and with the ship now part hidden by a vast stone ruin. Here was a wall pierced by arched windows, and beyond, a wilderness of low walls with a well in the middle, populated only by the daws and kites that screeched from the eaves. Faded letters were picked out in gilt over the architrave, but only Feyra of the company could make them out.

Santa Croce
.

A ragged stone cross, pitted and pocked by the elements, topped the jagged wall. At the sight of this symbol, the crew went into a huddle.

Feyra edged closer to the black-clad group on the deserted wooden pier.

‘It was a place of their prophet, their Christ,’ said one.

‘We cannot cross the threshold, it is unclean,’ agreed another.

‘Our Sultan must have made a mistake; this is no safe house for us.’

‘Our Sultan, the light of my eyes and the delight of my heart, does not make mistakes.’ A clear and ringing voice.

‘Look at it. No one lives here but the birds to shit on it. Their god left long ago.’

‘We cannot stay here.’

‘No, but this ruin will at least shelter us while we decide.’

Feyra followed them as they took her father within and they allowed her to make him comfortable. He was fortunate in his bed for the well-stuffed mattress was held firm by the sides of the box, and Feyra doubted he even knew he’d been moved. She ripped a strip from his sheet, and headed to the well in the centre of the old courtyard, tripping over the scattered stones broken up by the determined roots and grasses that had cracked them over the years.

Despite the torrential rainfall which had only just eased, the water level of the well was so far below that she could barely see a silver disc of cloudy sky lying at the bottom. There was an ancient rusted chain and pulley by the old stone bowl but no bucket, so she abandoned her idea of drawing water. She took the cloth back to the pier instead and dunked it in seawater – it would not quench her father’s thirst but she could at least bathe his fevered flesh.

As she walked back through the ruined arch she was met by the Janissaries, standing in a semicircle. The cloth dripped
in her hand, anointing her feet, and she stopped in her tracks, suddenly afraid.

She looked from one pair of dark eyes to another; none would directly meet her gaze. One spoke at last. ‘Turn about,’ he said. ‘We are boarding the ship.’

‘But –’ she extended her hand to point inside the old church, still holding the dripping cloth. ‘My father,’ she said, as if they were all simple, as if they did not understand.

‘He stays.’

It was she who had not understood. They were going to leave him. He was infected, and they would not have their captain back aboard. ‘Then I must stay with him.’

‘No. You are coming with us.’

‘That’s right,’ said another. ‘If death is to take us, I for one wish to enjoy the days that are left to me.’ Now the first man looked at her, his eyes caressing her unveiled face, and the body to which her damp clothes still clung.

So she was to be a plaything for these men, all the way back to Constantinople. There was no one here to defend her honour. Her father was lying nearby on his litter, insensible even to the rain that had begun to fall on his face. She had longed to go home, but not like this. Then one man, who stood a little apart from the others, spoke.

‘
I
will stay, as planned.’

He had silenced his fellows with his statement. At length one spoke, voice pitched high with incredulity. ‘Why? There is no safe house. To stay here would be suicide.’

‘Then I will follow the orders of my Sultan to the end as I have pledged, for he is the light of my eyes and the delight of my heart. And below our Sultan, I obey my captain. For he is our Sultan’s deputy, and at Lepanto he saved me from much worse than this.’

He held up his left hand, where there were three fingers lacking, leaving him only his forefinger and thumb.

Now Feyra knew the masked man for Takat Turan, he who had saved her once today on the water’s brink. Now, too, she remembered the story her father had told her.

When she asked him about this greatest sea battle of all he had told her not of the clash of the battleships or the bravery of the Admirals but a story of a boy, no older than her, brought aboard as a powder monkey to load the cannon. They had been boarded by the Venetians and Timurhan had found the lad literally pinned to the bulwark, for a Venetian dagger, thrown awry, had pinned his hand to the wood, and bit so deep he could not move. Timurhan had severed three of the lad’s fingers with his own scimitar and pulled the bleeding boy to the forecastle and out of danger. He’d told Feyra the boy had not even cried, but, once the Venetian forces had been repelled, watched in stoic silence as the ship’s doctor tarred and cauterized his fingers, only asking to save the Venetian blade as a keepsake.

Feyra could see that this courage had followed him to adulthood; and something else too, for Takat’s eyes glittered with an indefinable fervour.

The fellow that opposed him gave it a name. ‘You are mad!’

But Takat’s tones were even. ‘Nonetheless, if my captain needs me I will serve him until he dies.’

To find such loyalty in this dark time and this dark place touched Feyra deeply. Before she could shame herself by throwing herself at his feet, he went on.

‘And furthermore you are forgetting the orders of our Sultan, the light of my eyes and the delight of my heart. For
not one of you was destined to return. Remember: our work here is not yet done; we are part of a greater battle. This was but the opening salvo.’

Feyra read true loyalty in his eyes, and something more too, the fiery gaze of a fanatic. She wondered what more was to be done to this beleaguered city, but the other soldier began to argue.

‘You have lost your wits! How long do you think it will take their officers and caliphs to find us? Have you never heard of the hellish methods of their torturers? The ways of Byzantium are nothing to it.’

Takat Turan shrugged lightly, as if such torments were nothing. ‘Then let them come. For in the words of the Sultan, if they should pull my limbs from my body, and tear my eyes from my head and tongue from my throat, I will then be transported direct to Jannah, where I will walk and see and speak again, to praise the name of God.’

The other men shifted uncomfortably and began to talk among themselves. Then, at last, the one that had spoken first said, ‘Please yourself,’ and walked to Feyra. He found his way barred by the black-clad arm of Takat Turan.

‘She stays too.’ He spoke in slow and measured tones.

‘What?’ the other spluttered. ‘Why should you have her all to yourself, you lecherous dog?’

‘Your question shames you. I serve my God and my Sultan and my captain, and my purity would not importune a lady.’

His accuser stepped back a pace as if struck. Takat Turan took his moment and spoke to Feyra from the side of his mouth. ‘Lady, go to your father and lie as close as you can by his side.’

She slipped beyond his protective arm, and lay down in the bed-cum-litter beside her insensible father. She was suddenly deathly tired and willing for someone else to direct her fate. She lay looking directly overhead, at the rain-fattened clouds scudding across the sky, listening to the angry voices ringing around the old stones.

‘You may come to get her if you wish. See where she lies, by her father. You drew lots, I know, even to carry him from the ship. I
know
that my God will protect me for my purpose. Can you say the same? If so, come; pluck her out of his deathbed.’

Feyra waited, watching the clouds, for hands to grasp and arms to lift.

‘And then, what?’ came Takat’s voice again. ‘Which one of you will bring her aboard, and invite her to your cot? You might as well dally with the Plague maiden with her red apron and her broom.’

Not one man came forth to lay hands on her. Feyra dared to raise her head a little. The men shifted and some looked at the ground. Uncertainly, muttering and shamefaced, they retreated from the building, leaving the dying man and the two young people in the ruin.

From the archway Feyra watched as the anchor was weighed, the ropes hauled in and the ship shoved from the dock by impatient feet. Only then did she turn to Takat.

‘Thank you.’

He bowed very slightly. ‘All debts must be paid in time.’ She thought then that he referred to what he owed her father and was glad. She smiled at him and it occurred to her that she had never before smiled at a man beside her father without the covering of a veil.

He did not return her smile, but instead looked out to
sea, through the broken archway of the great door, framing the shrinking ship. He had pulled down his mask so it rucked about his throat and she could study his face, his beard trimmed and oiled to a point, his lips unexpectedly full between the black hair. He seemed to be looking beyond the ship, beyond even the curve of the horizon and all the cares of the world. Instinctively she trusted him.

‘What shall we do now?’ she asked.

Takat Turan thought for a time. ‘We must get your father to shelter.’ He surveyed the ruin. ‘Look. There is a place with a roof still – a gatehouse or some such. I will help you carry him.’

With much effort, her sinews straining, they half carried, half dragged Timurhan beneath the shelter of the old gatehouse. Inside the shack there was a faldstool where the gatekeeper must have sat once, a bracket for a lamp which had long since been extinguished, and a nest of starlings under the eaves that screeched in protest at having to share their cot.

Feyra stroked her father’s face but he did not respond. His breath was laboured and his fingers blacker than ever. She saw Takat look down at his captain and she could read his thoughts although he did not speak them aloud. He looked instead to the derelict roof and the sky beyond. ‘I have a small parcel of food,’ he said, ‘but it is barely enough. Before night falls I must procure some more supplies.’

Feyra knew he would have to steal, but she did not care. She could no longer ignore the gnawing hunger in her stomach. As he turned to go she laid a hand on his arm to stop him.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You cannot go abroad thus. You look
different to the citizens of this place. Unwind your turban too.’

He looked less threatening without it, younger, and the wind ruffled his dark hair about his face. ‘Now go.’

The black-clad figure turned at the gate, on a divot in the stone where Saint Sebastian had once driven his sword into the ground. ‘Hide yourself well,’ he said. ‘You’ll see me again.’

She watched him until he had turned the corner. Over his shoulder she could see
Il Cavaliere
, far out to sea already, her prow set towards Constantinople.