Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six: Chios (8 page)

Then his eyes flickered over Swan and froze.

Swan offered him the smile that the lion has for the gazelle.

‘In the aftermath of such a brilliant stroke, surely we should be thanking God,’ said the bishop.

The captain bowed. ‘What we should be doing is attacking their rearguard and stinging the bastards so that they think twice about coming back.’ He looked at the president. ‘What we are doing is –
nothing
.’

‘More violence may only force the Turk into greater efforts!’ the president said. But he was looking at Swan, and sweating.

Swan didn’t push past the bishop. Life at his father’s episcopal court – and at Hampton and with Bessarion – had taught him a great deal about patience. And revenge.

Instead of acting prematurely, he watched the bishop. The man was almost a head taller than the president, and looked more like a man-at-arms than some of the men-at-arms. He spread his arms and gave an invocation, and then all the people in the square knelt and said three prayers.

And then the bishop glanced at Swan.

Swan stepped forward past the bishop, and placed himself in front of the president.

‘You have misplayed your hand, you know,’ Swan said pleasantly. ‘The Turks are beaten and they will run. They know the Allied fleet is on the way.’

‘There is no Allied fleet!’ the terrified man hissed.

Swan, who knew perfectly well that there was no Allied fleet, kept his composure. ‘You can’t imagine that the Turks are running from nothing?’ He smiled. ‘I call on you to release this sortie, to wreak the havoc on the infidel that is your duty – your duty!’ Swan bowed. ‘And please, release my friend the Lord of Eressos immediately.’ Swan leaned over and spoke very quietly. ‘I have your correspondence with Drappierro.’

Swan had also learned, in gutters and palaces, that sometimes a really big lie is better than any amount of truth.

The president turned a chalky white.

He stepped back as if struck – and raised a hand. But he was not utterly without cunning. ‘You will ride with the sortie, sir?' he said, his voice already rich with unction. ‘A man as full of knightly virtue as you!’

Swan laughed. He had laughed more in the last six hours …

‘I will ride with the sortie, unarmoured. I will go unto the battle front like Uriah, but I will not be touched.’ He grinned like a maniac at the president of the Mahona. And held up his left hand, where a brilliantly carved diamond glittered. ‘Because I am invincible,’ he said.

He bowed to the bishop, and one of the bishop’s servants ran for a horse.

What he got was a fine black churchman’s horse, a heavy beast that the bishop rode in parades and occasionally to falconry. But Swan didn’t care.

He vaulted into his saddle, and joined the captain of the town.

The mercenary was no older than Swan, and wore a fortune in armour. ‘Messire is a Knight of the Order?’ he asked. The bishop’s servants handed Swan gauntlets and a bevoir for his neck and a fine German sallet – none fit well, but all were far better than nothing. And a sword and a dagger.

‘I’m merely a volunteer,’ Swan admitted.

The young captain twirled his moustache. ‘Well, by Saint George, Messire has already won the day with the Mahona, so if Messire would do my little company the honour of carrying the standard of the town, perhaps we will show these worthy Turks that Italians have some skill in arms. Eh?’

Swan took the lance with the town’s small standard.

With mounted crossbowmen and every local gentleman who had a horse and arms, they mustered a hundred cavalry for the sortie.

The Turks were well prepared for such a move, and the captain, for all his youth, was too professional to waste men late in a victory, so the next hour was spent in a series of dashes from cover to cover, quite unlike Swan’s former notions of armoured combat on horseback before he came out to Rhodos. Under the captain’s shouted commands, they would ride at the beach, swerve in behind a hill, and their crossbowmen would snipe at the enemy rearguard from cover, while pages held their horses – and then, when the janissaries prepared a counter attack, the men-at-arms would sweep away.

It was exactly the sort of warfare that Swan had practised under the turcopilier of Rhodos.

By the time the sun was high in the sky, Swan, in almost no armour, had sweated through all his clothes, and the fully armoured men’s faces were as red as beets when they raised their visors or removed their armets or sallets.

There were fewer than a dozen Turkish ships left on the beach when the janissary commander made his lethal error. He had a great deal of beach to cover, and he elected to spread his men in open ranks – only two deep, and four paces between men.

The captain was eating an apple. He watched for a moment, and turned to Swan. ‘It is like the moment when she kisses you – you know what I mean, messire?’

Swan laughed. ‘Oh, I do,’ he said.

When they charged, the Turkish bows plucked men from saddles – or shot horses. But the Turks were too thinly distributed to stop the charge, and clearly had been misled as to their number – and in the time it takes a man to bleed out, the situation went from an organised retreat to a rout, and then the horsemen were in among the galleys, killing sailors, and after that, it was a massacre. The oarsmen were mostly slaves – and as soon as the horseman came down the beach, they screamed like ghazis and ripped at their captors with their bare hands.

It was too late to be decisive. Eight of the dozen galleys got off the beach, and there was little the horsemen could do to stop them. But four ships were taken. And when the Turks tried to come in with other ships and take them back, they were greeted by the Italian captain’s little surprise – a pair of guns on wheeled carriages.

The Turks ran for the open sea, and the garrison cheered from the walls.

When they returned through the sally port, the Lord of Eressos stood there in half-armour with a borrowed sword.

‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘I’ve missed everything!’

Swan slid from his borrowed horse. ‘I doubt it. I think this war will go on a long, long time.’

He introduced the captain of the town to his Lesbian friend, and the three of them, when the horses were curried and the weapons cleaned, proceeded to bathe – first in water, and later in adulation.

Late that night, Swan sat in a waterfront taverna, and gazed at the diamond on his finger.

‘Is that the jewel that the whoreson Drappierro wanted?’ The Lord of Eressos spread his hands.

Swan looked at him. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked, his head racing.
Theodora said …

‘People talk.’ Zambale smiled, then shrugged. ‘I suppose one of the guards said something.’

Swan looked at him in wine-soaked puzzlement. ‘What would they know? Drappierro sent everyone out of the room.’

And then it hit him. Drappierro had spies everywhere – on Chios and Lesvos. Swan’s eyes locked with Zambale’s.

He regretted opening his mouth.

Zambale backed up a step and drew a dagger.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Swan said. He got his back to the wall and reached for his borrowed sword.

It wasn’t there, of course. It was leaning against the wall of the bishop’s palace.

‘You have to know everything, do you not, Englishman?’ Zambale flicked the dagger with easy competence between his hands.

The Italian captain took a sip of wine.

‘In this case,’ Swan said, ‘I can let it go. If you can.’

Zambale pursed his lips.

Swan didn’t relax – he was in one of the guards the order taught – but he raised a hand. ‘Zambale – I like you. Let it go. I don’t care. If you reported to Drappierro, or if you didn’t – I don’t care.’

‘Always the hero. With Prince Dorino, and now, here.’ Zambale’s face was twisted with rage – or grief. The dagger flicked into his right hand – point down.

‘Walk away,’ Swan said.

Almost as if the dagger was controlling the man, the right arm went up, and Zambale slammed the dagger at Swan overhand.

Swan took the weight of the blow with his open left hand – which then closed like a vice, thumb down, on Zambale’s wrist. He twisted, and Zambale’s face came so close that they were eye to eye, nose to nose, as Swan twisted the other man’s wrist on the blade of the dagger and stripped the weapon, which fell to the floor with a clatter.

He backed away, leaving the other man with nothing but a sore shoulder.

The Italian captain took another sip of wine.

The prostitutes and the wine-boys were watching intently.

Zambale sighed. He sank to one knee – and plucked up the dagger. ‘Fuck you,’ he said, in Italian.

The Italian captain drew his dagger and tossed it across the table to Swan, who caught it by the blade and flipped it into his hand.

‘Walk away,’ Swan said, again. ‘Whatever you think is worth this – manhood, honour, chivalry, money – it’s not worth it. All lies. Walk away.’

Zambale shouted incoherently and lunged, and Swan killed him.

‘Giovanni della Scalle,’ the Italian captain said, introducing himself. ‘You have killed before, I think.’

‘Many times,’ Swan said, in utter self-disgust. He drank down another cup of wine.

Della Scalle shook his head and made a wry face. ‘I think that you tried not to kill him. I did not really understand – I’m sorry, I didn’t know what was happening.’ His insincerity was as alarming as his initial reluctance – Swan thought that Della Scalle could have disarmed Zambale at any time.

Swan bowed and returned his cleaned dagger to the man. ‘Messire, I hope it is so, and you will pardon my cynicism, but it must be very convenient in certain quarters that Messire Drappierro’s friend here is … dead.’

Della Salle blinked, and his eyebrows rose. ‘Very convenient,’ he said. ‘I ought to arrest you, as duelling is illegal, but I find that you acted in self-defence, and I will so report it to the Mahona.’ He leaned forward. ‘I might have killed you, too. My employer would fancy that.’ He nodded.

‘I need to leave this place,’ Swan said.

Two days later, a fishing boat carrying the English squire doubled the long point guarding the Bay of Kalloni and turned into the channel itself on a favouring wind. As the arms of the land opened, Swan could see all the way down the great bay. He could see the pair of galleys on guard just a few bowshots into the bay, and behind them …

… behind them were forty galleys – some with the arms of the Gattelusi, and some with the arms of the order, and another dozen with the arms of Venice.

Swan watched them for hours as his fishing boat tacked down the bay, and twice, he wept.

Eventually, he found himself before Fra Tommaso in the great stern cabin of the
Blessed Saint John
.

Fra Tommaso sat quietly, hands crossed.

Swan stood in silence, too, after an initial bow.

Finally, Tommaso cleared his throat. ‘I’m glad you survived,’ he said.

Swan didn’t really trust himself to speak. He tried twice, and Fra Tommaso handed him a cup of sweet wine.

After he had taken a sip, he managed to begin. He wanted to be calm, and rational. And instead, all he could find was anger.

‘It was all a ruse!’ he said.

Fra Tommaso looked away. Swan had to admit to himself that the man was genuinely moved.

Swan shook his head. ‘Drappierro was not a spy,’ he said.

Fra Tommaso spread his hands. ‘That is between Messire Drappierro and God,’ he said. ‘But I think the truth is that he was a
very good
spy.’

‘Drappierro was playing the double agent, but all along he was helping to pin the Turkish fleet in place on pointless little sieges until you rallied the great powers.’ Swan pointed out of the beautifully glazed stern windows at the fleet arrayed behind them. ‘You have the ships for a battle. Odds of two to one are nothing to the order.’ He could not conceal his bitterness. ‘You must have been ready to pounce on their vanguard.’

‘Yes,’ the old man said. ‘When they separated half their fleet, we sent for the Venetians.’ He shrugged. ‘They came a day late – after the Turks scuttled away.’ Tommaso shook his head. ‘There will be no battle now. Would I be a foolish old man if I guessed that you started the fire on the Turkish flagship?’

Swan nodded.

Fra Tommaso hung his head. ‘Thy will be done,’ he said to the crucifix that hung on the cabin wall.

‘I also forged a letter from Fra Domenico ordering Drappierro to lure the Turks into pressing the siege of Chios until he could launch his counter-attack.’ Swan chewed and spat each word. ‘I hid it where the Turks were sure to find it after they captured me.’

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘Brilliant,’ he said.

‘But Fra Domenico sent me for the opposite reason, did he not? The ring was the signal – the ring would tell Drappierro that all was well, and my presence was the guarantee to the Turks that all was exactly as Drappierro was telling them. It was double bluff, and I ruined it.’

Fra Tommaso looked up and met his eye. ‘We didn’t trust you.’ His eyes dropped. ‘It is God’s will.’ He shook his head. ‘We will never have another Christian fleet like this – not for a hundred years.’ But then he raised his eyes. ‘But you will recall that I never wanted this course of action. I am of the faction in the order that says that our duty is to the sick and the poor, and not to Genoa or Venice.’

Swan drew the ring of the conqueror from his finger and threw it on the table. ‘Here. Keep it.’ He turned to leave, and paused.

Fra Tommaso narrowed his eyes. He looked at it and sighed. ‘How did you preserve the ring?’ he asked.

Swan knew he was bragging. But he couldn’t help himself. ‘I had a copy made,’ he said. ‘I gave Drappierro the copy. It was dark.’ He placed his donat’s ring on the table next to the conqueror’s ring. ‘Neither of these will make anyone invincible,’ he said.

‘Drappierro is still alive,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Keep it. Fra Domenico gave it to you. You are angry – but this is God’s will. I do not pretend to understand to what end God works. Take the rings – both of them. And stop being a boy. Be a man. Yes, we used you. If we had ordered you to board a Turkish galley alone, you would have gone, and died. Yes?’