Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six: Chios (3 page)

‘Speak, young man,’ said a black-clad Genoese. He wore a chain of office and spoke with more icy disdain than Prince Dorino had ever evinced. He held a pomander ball very close to his nose.

Swan bowed. It is very difficult for a young man to appear to best advantage in hose stained with fish guts and a Greek peasant’s tunic with the sweat of several men on it, but Swan managed a fine bow despite all.

‘My lords, I am here on behalf of the Knights of the Order of St John and the Allies.’ He paused, hoping he’d startled them.

‘It’s a Turkish trick. They are impostors,’ said an older voice – querulous and high pitched. ‘And they smell,’ he added, as if that was all the argument necessary.

Swan removed the donat’s ring from his finger and handed it to the President of the Council – at the same time realising that the ring would have been his death sentence had the janissaries looked him over carefully.

It was examined – handed from one to another.

The Lord of Eressos lost patience. ‘We’re not trying to sell you bad wool, you ungrateful usurers!’ he snapped.

Just for a moment, Swan admired the other young man’s genuine contempt.

Every black-capped head came up together, and forty old men glared at Hector Zambale.

‘We are not used to being addressed in such a way,’ snapped the president.

‘It will seem as mild as a whore’s kiss when you pull an oar for the Sultan,’ Zambale shot back. ‘I am the Lord of Eressos of Lesvos, as at least one of you bastards knows perfectly well.’ He stared at one of the younger black-caps, who wilted.

Swan’s estimation of Zambale’s skills went up another notch.

The president turned to the younger man. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.

The man bowed his head. ‘Yes, messire.’

The president shook his head. And looked at Swan. ‘We have been summoned to surrender the island by no less a pirate then Omar Reis, who raped his way across Thrace last year.’

Swan nodded. ‘I know him,’ he said with airy confidence. ‘I have bested him ere this.’

Now it was Zambale’s turn to look at Swan with admiration.

Swan shrugged in false modesty. It was, after all, the only kind of modesty the Genoese seemed to understand. ‘With the Catholic fleet, we can defeat Omar Reis – indeed, it is my lord’s intention to trap him here.’

‘Christ on the cross, boy! Trap him somewhere else!’ The president’s fist crashed down on his heavy imported desk, and men flinched. Swan could smell more than fish – he could smell their fear on the cool spring night. ‘Who is your lord?’

Swan bowed again. ‘Fra Angelo Domenico is the admiral,’ he said.

‘Sweet Saviour preserve us! We’re caught between Fra Diablo and Satan!’ shouted a merchant.

‘Has not the Genoese Grand Fleet … already departed these waters?’ the president asked.

Zambale stepped forward. ‘A feint,’ he said.

‘We will appear great fools if we surrender the island and the Turks are defeated,’ said an old man.

The president shook his head. ‘The Turks will not be defeated. There is no fleet.’

‘These young men risked their lives. You think they would do that for a ruse?’ asked another.

Swan was getting a solid notion of who belonged to which faction, just from body language. The richest men seemed inclined to surrender. The middling men seemed inclined to fight.

He also had the oddest idea – that Zambale and the president of the Mahona knew each other. And were shamming enmity. It made no sense, but he could not shake it.

Swan spread his hands. ‘You know that in Thrace, Omar Reis promised lenient terms to the merchant class.’ He smiled. ‘After they surrendered the towns, he had the older men crucified and their families sold into slavery.’ It wasn’t quite true. But his words had the desired effect.

The president rose. ‘You are a pair of liars, messires. The Turks keep their promises. It is the Grand Master who is the father of lies.’

Swan bit his lip. He didn’t, at some rarefied level, care much if the Turks took all the Genoese islands in the eastern Mediterranean, but at another level it stuck in his craw that forty rich men were prepared to sell their religion and their peasants to the Turks to maintain control of their precious money. And the street imp – the son of a Southwark whore – couldn’t resist twisting their noses.

So he shrugged. ‘I have delivered my message. If you are so craven and so greedy that you intend to surrender your possessions without a fight, I swear to you, messires, that should the Christian fleet triumph, I’ll make sure that every one of you loses everything – as traitors to the religion, and heretics.’

It was well said – calm, arrogant, and contemptuous. Swan was quite proud of himself. Even the president paled.

And then he ordered his men-at-arms to throw them into a dungeon.

‘What in the name of heaven possessed you to say such a thing?’ Zambale asked. ‘Now they’ll never let us go!’ But the big man sat back and laughed. ‘I liked it, though.’

Swan drank some water that had seen wine once. ‘You weren’t so gentle with them yourself,’ he said.

Zambale shrugged and stretched himself. The straw was clean. ‘I loathe them and all they stand for. Still – if they have us killed here, it’s not the glorious end I was looking for.’

Swan spoke from recent conversion. ‘Death,’ he said, ‘is pretty much the same whether in the heat of battle or in bed of old age.’

Zambale chuckled. ‘Make that up yourself?’ he asked. ‘So – Englishman – what brings you here?’

Swan liked Zambale despite the bad beginning they had made, but he was still … suspicious. So he didn’t depart from his story – he described being penniless but noble, and applying to become a donat of the order. Zambale listened impatiently.

‘You do not look at women like a priest,’ Zambale said.

Swan smiled. ‘I am not a priest.’

‘You never mention the saints. I’ve hardly seen you pray. Come – for whom do you really work?’

Swan smiled. ‘I am as you see – a donat of the order.’

Zambale lay back. ‘Have it as you will.’

The next morning – they had to guess as they had no access to the outdoors – a pair of black-capped magistrates came and sat outside their iron-barred cell.

‘How far away is the allied fleet?’ one asked.

Swan affected disdain. ‘Why tell you? You’ll pass it to your friends, the Turks.’

The two magistrates looked at each other.

One man said, ‘It is possible that the council may elect to defend the island.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘But our information is that the order has only five galleys, all blockaded in Mytilini.’

Zambale nodded. ‘That much is true.’ He shrugged.

‘They seem confident,’ said one magistrate.

‘What do you know of the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ asked the other.

Swan managed a smile. ‘A great deal. But you can see them from your walls.’

‘Tell him!’ said the first magistrate.

‘They are ignorant boys!’ spat the other.

The two men glared at each other.

Swan lay back on the straw as if uninterested. It was one of the finest acts of his life. But his brain was working at fever pitch. It occurred to him that he needed to know
how
they already knew where the order’s galleys were.

Apparently Zambale’s brain was also working feverishly. ‘Have the Turks sent their terms?’ he asked.

The older magistrate nodded. ‘Yes, young man.’

‘They are not what we were promised,’ said the other, somewhat ingenuously.

The older man glared at his compatriot.

Swan regarded them from his straw and wondered whether he was infested with fleas and lice yet. He already itched. He stank of fear and fish and sweat.

The two men asked a few more questions. Neither Zambale nor Swan offered any information about the location of the Christian fleet. Eventually, the two men left.

‘They’re fishing,’ Zambale said.

‘They’re desperate,’ Swan said. ‘Last night they weren’t desperate. How bad are the Turkish terms?’

‘What is it about the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ Zambale asked. ‘Perhaps the Turks have heavy gonnes?’

Swan lay back and tried to think.

Time passed. They were brought good bread and strong, if young, wine, and some fish. They ate it all.

Swan was growing to like Zambale a good deal. In prison, the younger man didn’t posture and his desire to prove Swan his inferior had vanished, to be replaced by an easy raillery and a certain amount of teamwork.

Zambale shrugged after dinner. ‘I’ll get out,’ he said. ‘I’m rich, and I have things these pigs want. I’ll have you out of here like a pretty girl gets out of a convent.’

Swan nodded. ‘If the order arranges a release for me, I’ll get you out, as well,’ he said.

Like boys on an outing, they swore.

Later, a pair of heavily armoured soldiers came. They had short spears, Milanese breast and back plates and full arm armour and helmets.

‘Uh-oh,’ Swan muttered.

A third man – the man who delivered food – opened the door. In Greek, he said, ‘Only the man calling himself the Lord of Eressos, please. Or they will be very rough.’

Zambale rose. He looked at Swan and shrugged. ‘If you find they killed me, get my cousins to bury me.’

Swan bowed. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he said.

Zambale clasped his hand. He didn’t say any more. He looked at the two soldiers with a contempt that Swan wished he could emulate, and was marched away.

Almost a quarter of an hour elapsed before a tall African in impeccable Italian clothes slipped into the antechamber of the cell, outside the bars.

Swan’s whole body clenched.

The man bowed, in the Moslem way. ‘Master Suani?’ he asked.

One of Auntie’s Africans. She had four or five – he could remember them. Not the steward – Swan had seen him killed. But the other man had been present – he racked his brain. Swan didn’t know the man’s name, but he thought that he knew his face.

‘You have the advantage of me,’ Swan said in Arabic.

‘My mistress is even now bargaining for your life with her brother,’ the tall African said. He grinned. ‘I left Master Drappierro questioning your accomplice. Do you know that the gentlemen who hold this town have sold you—’

Another voice cut across the African’s. ‘Not so fast, Mustafa.’ Messire Drappierro appeared out of the gloom, flanked by another pair of guards.

Swan’s brain raced along a dozen channels at once.

Drappierro turned. ‘Everyone out. You too, Mustafa.’ He gave orders in his usual tone of absolute power. The soldiers walked off without a murmur. Mustafa raised an eyebrow and then bowed towards Swan.

‘I promise you, you will prefer my mistress to anything this man offers,’ he said.

When Mustafa was gone, Drappierro came and sat by the bars of Swan’s cell. ‘Where is the ring?’ he asked abruptly.

Swan was ready. From the moment he saw Drappierro, he had decided that it was
all
about the ring – that Drappierro’s lust for antiquities was such that it was the lever that could move him. The question reinforced his guess.

‘I have it,’ Swan said.

Drappierro leapt to his feet. ‘Give it to me!’ he said.

Swan laughed. It sounded a little forced, to him – not his best bluff. He was, in truth, completely terrified.

‘You don’t think I’d have it here?’ he said.

Drappierro glared at him. ‘God knows you have had plenty of opportunity to get it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to bring it to me.’

Swan sat down. ‘It is in Mytilini,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Drappierro asked. ‘I have people there – I’ll have it fetched.’

‘And you’ll sell me to Auntie,’ Swan replied.

Drappierro leaned closer. ‘My dear boy,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to sell you to Auntie – although I doubt anyone’s ever called her that in the course of her illustrious life. Do you know why she is here? It is curiously apropos. Hamza Beg is the commander of this fleet – but the command should have been Omar Reis’s. He sails in the second rank – but his sister is here for the Sultan. She is Mehmed’s eye. Hamza Beg has failed at Rhodos and failed at Kos and now, if he hesitates here, Master Swan, she will be rid of him and her brother will be the most powerful soldier in the empire. Those are Turkish politics. Omar Reis is my friend. Not yours, I think. You may trust him to kill you in a most imaginative way if he catches you. Imagine your death throes while you chew on your severed penis. One of a hundred hideous humiliations that the fertile mind of the Moslem has concocted.’ Drappierro allowed himself the flicker of a smile.

‘I’m pretty sure they do the same in Florence,’ Swan said, just to swallow his terror. ‘And the Allied fleet will come—’

Drappierro sat up angrily. ‘What a foolish lie,’ he said. ‘The Genoese Grand Fleet is long gone. You know how I know? I ordered them myself.’ He looked at Swan and shook his head, as if disappointed. ‘Listen, Master Swan. You are a promising young man. You seem to have real taste and you seem to have a ready wit. I need you – in fact, I need a dozen like you. I intend to run most of the Mediterranean over the next decade.’ His smile flickered again. ‘This is a very difficult game, and I don’t expect you know a third of it. So please, leave the thinking to me.’

‘Planning to overthrow the Grand Turk?’ Swan asked.

Drappierro smiled gently. ‘No, my dear. Much the opposite. Don’t you think that Christianity – inasmuch as there ever was an organised Christianity – is done? The Turks are the new power, and they will rein supreme. The fall of Constantinople signals the new era.’ He spread his hands. ‘You think me a traitor? The traitors are those who want to provoke a bloodbath that we cannot win. Or take another view – the traitors are the kings of England, Scotland, France, Castile and the Emperor, who will not leave their squabbles to make a real effort to defeat the Turk. Even if they did, I expect they’d fail. But they won’t even try. The West is done.’ He smiled again. ‘Don’t you think?’

Swan thought that he had a point. But he also thought that he sounded like an insufferable prick busy convincing himself.

Swan – ever a man for the main chance – was puzzled to find that he couldn’t stomach this, of all treasons.
What an odd cause to choose for dying
, he thought.