The Tournament

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘Do not concern yourself with the death of the Austrian player,’ the Sultan said simply, looking away.

  ‘But he was seen speaking with Brunello on several occas—’

  ‘You are to concentrate on the murder of the cardinal. The chess player’s death does not concern you.’ The Sultan then held up the note that the sadrazam had just given to him.

  I caught my breath at the sight of it.

  It was the same note Mr Ascham had shown me the night before, the one he had taken from the secret compartment in Maximilian’s shoe heel. While we had been here in the Hagia Sophia, the Sultan’s men had been in our rooms.

  The Sultan indicated the code at the top of the note. ‘See these numbers and letters: “N – 16 K 20 G, 6 r”. It is a reference to my northern military dock. Right now, in that dock sit sixteen warships—or as they are known in German, Kriegsschiffe—twenty galleys—Galeeren—and six ramming ships, or Rammschiffe. Maximilian was a spy for Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, reporting back to him on my naval strength.’

  At that moment, something became clear in my mind: the fishy-salty smell on Maximilian’s soles. It was not the smell of a kitchen but of a dock. The grey powder was gunpowder and the spots of blood found on them were the specks of spilled blood commonly found on a military dock.

  The Sultan continued: ‘The virgin was also a spy. Her task was to report on my unvarnished moods, opinions, reactions and demeanour, as witnessed by her in the privacy of my Harem. As I said, I would prefer that you target your efforts on deaths that I do not know the cause of.’

  My teacher swallowed hard. ‘As you wish.’

  Just then, perhaps fortuitously, the sadrazam reappeared at the Sultan’s side. ‘Sire, that other matter has been taken care of. And your lunch with the Imam is prepared.’

  The Sultan nodded. ‘Thank you. I shall come when this game is over—’

  A collective gasp from the crowd made us all look around.

  Vladimir had just taken Zaman’s queen.

  The crowd murmured uncomfortably.

  A familiar voice from my right piped up and said something in a Slavic tongue. It was Prince Ivan encouraging his player.

  He saw me and said in English, ‘Princess Elizabeth. My man has the measure of this Persian. Zaman is good but he is no match for a player of Vlad’s skill.’

  ‘Do not speak too soon, Ivan. Pride goeth before a fall,’ I said.

  Ivan said, ‘We take chess very seriously in Muscovy and we breed our players tough. Vlad has him figured out. I hope that your man does not find himself sitting across the board from Vlad, for I fear that Vlad will make short work of him, too.’

  As Ivan turned back to watch the match, I observed him for a moment. There was a definite intensity to him, but it was an earnest type of intensity. More than anything, he just wanted respect; for himself, his people, his duchy. I saw him as a future ruler: intelligent and proud but forever vexed by the way other nations looked down their noses at his principality.

  A short time later, Vladimir won the first game—and rather easily, too, it must be said. Ivan looked over at me and gave me a knowing nod.

  At that point, the Sultan abruptly stood and thus so did everyone else in the hall. ‘Please excuse me,’ he said to my teacher, ‘I must depart for a short time. The duties of a ruler never cease. It has been most interesting talking with you. Please, continue your investigations.’

  Then he bowed politely and left the hall.

  I was about to head back to our regular seats when my teacher did a most precocious and presumptuous thing. He leaned over to the queen and said in Greek, ‘Your Highness? Might I indulge a word?’

  The queen eyed my teacher coolly, but after a moment nodded. ‘A very brief one.’

  THE QUEEN

  AS THE SECOND GAME of Zaman’s and Vladimir’s match began, our chairs were brought beside the queen’s throne.

  ‘Are you enjoying the tournament, Your Highness?’ Mr Ascham whispered politely.

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘You play chess yourself?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Forgive me, but I have never had the opportunity to ask this of an actual queen and I must take this chance: do you, as a queen, delight in the fact that the most powerful piece on a chessboard is the queen?’

  ‘I confess to taking some pleasure in the notion, yes.’

  She was speaking blandly, idly, indulging my teacher, her eyes fixed on the match.

  Then Mr Ascham whispered, ‘Are you aware that Cardinal Cardoza knows of your affair with the wrestler, Darius, and extracts unnatural favours from Darius in exchange for keeping your liaison secret?’

  The queen blinked.

  Once.

  Her head did not move as she continued to gaze out at Zaman’s ongoing match. It was barely perceptible, but I saw her swallow before she turned to face my teacher.

  ‘I am aware, Mr Roger Ascham of Cambridge, England, that my husband has enlisted your aid in unravelling the murder of the visiting cardinal. I was not aware that I had become the subject of your investigation.’

  ‘Your Highness, I seek only the truth.’

  ‘The truth is not always worth finding.’

  ‘Are you aware that Cardoza knows of your affair and extracts favours from Darius in exchange for keeping it secret?’

  A long pause. Then the queen said, ‘I am and I am not.’

  ‘You will have to explain that to me further.’

  ‘I do not have to do anything, for I am a queen and you are not. Remember this, Englishman. I am aware that Cardinal Cardoza knows of my dalliance. He has known for two weeks now and in that time he has pressed me for certain favours. Not of the carnal variety—the cardinal does not like women—but of a royal nature. Intervening when his priests are caught molesting boys in their confessionals, freeing them from the Sultan’s jail with a word to the guards.’

  ‘And how, then, are you not aware?’

  The queen bowed her head.

  ‘I was not aware that my Darius had given his body to the cardinal as payment for his silence,’ she said softly. ‘I fail to see, however, what connection this has with your inquiries into the death of Cardinal Farnese.’

  ‘If my theory on the matter is correct, it holds a most important connection.’

  ‘And what is that theory?’ the queen asked.

  I leaned forward, listening intently, for until then, beyond a single cryptic comment about Cardinal Farnese being murdered by mistake, I myself did not know the theory that had been formulating in my teacher’s mind.

  Mr Ascham said, ‘I believe that Cardinal Farnese was killed by accident and that the mutilation of his face in the manner of the lunatic was a sham perpetrated by the killer to disguise his, or her, error.’

  ‘An accident?’ the queen said, giving voice to my own silent confusion.

  ‘Yes,’ my teacher said. ‘For, you see, Cardinal Farnese died from poisoning, not from his ghastly wounds. But this is something of a paradox because, as I see it, no-one in this palace had a truly compelling reason to murder the visiting cardinal. But several people, including you and your lover, the chef and a whoremonger, had great reasons to murder Cardinal Cardoza.’

  My breath caught. This was the first I had heard of this and it made an odd kind of sense.

  ‘It is my theory,’ Mr Ascham went on, ‘that Cardinal Farnese, dining in Cardinal Cardoza’s private rooms, ate from Cardinal Cardoza’s plate and inadvertently ate poisoned food intended for Cardinal Cardoza. I am of the belief that every murder is committed for a reason, a logical reason that benefits the murderer. I am thus on the hunt for the person or persons who would benefit from Cardinal Cardoza’s death, and you, Your Highness, are one such person.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My teacher, speaking ever so boldly, was all but accusing the Sultan’s wife of murder.

  The queen did not move, kept staring forward.

  Then, oddly, her lips curved into a
smile.

  ‘Mr Ascham, one does not rise from slave to concubine to queen without knowing how to navigate an imperial court and arrange for the removal of certain rivals. If I desire someone to be killed, then killed they will be. If I were to tell my dear husband that you, for example, were vexing me, by tomorrow morning you would find yourself at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara with your ankles tied to an old cannon. On the other hand, I could simply order that you be strangled in your sleep tonight.

  ‘I do not need to kill in secret or via the subterfuge of poison, sir. Like the queen in chess, I wait for my moment and when I move, I move brutally and decisively. But the queen in chess is not invincible—she can be taken by any other piece; likewise, she can also be trapped on a square and be forced to bide her time before she can emerge to wreak her vengeance.’

  The queen’s tone was icy and perfectly calm despite the subject matter.

  I found myself shaking, my heart beating ever faster.

  Clearly, Cardinal Cardoza had boxed her in, but from what I was hearing—if I was interpreting her correctly—the queen was planning retaliatory action against him.

  ‘Your Highness is very direct in both her words and, apparently, her actions,’ my teacher said. ‘I hope I do not find myself on the receiving end of them merely for carrying out the Sultan’s investigation.’

  ‘If you maintain my secret from my husband, then you have nothing to fear, Englishman.’

  ‘Consider your secret safe,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘I am, however, intrigued by one thing: Darius was also being extorted by Cardinal Cardoza. You act directly, swiftly, without the need for subterfuge, but Darius may not have been so free to act. It might have been he who attempted to poison Cardoza and mistakenly killed Farnese.’

  The queen glanced at my teacher and nodded. ‘That could indeed be so,’ she said. Then, abruptly, she waved us away. ‘I am wearying of this conversation and the match is reaching a critical stage. Please, leave me.’

  We returned to our original places where we resumed our observations of the match and found that it had indeed reached a pivotal and most unexpected juncture.

  THE SULTAN’S MAN STRUGGLES

  AS ZAMAN’S MATCH AGAINST Vladimir unfolded, it quickly became apparent that it was not unfolding according to plan.

  Vladimir was not only beating the Sultan’s champion, he was thrashing him. The Muscovite had just won the second game and had now—as the Sultan returned from his meeting and resumed his place on his throne—taken an early lead in the third.

  The Sultan’s brow furrowed with concern. The match could be over by mid-morning and his champion humiliated.

  The crowd seemed to sense this, too. Every time Vladimir took one of Zaman’s pieces, they cast nervous glances at the royal stage and whispered animatedly.

  Having survived his bristly conversation with the queen, my teacher now watched the game with renewed interest. I noticed that his eyes narrowed curiously as he followed each move.

  And so as that third game progressed, I followed it in an unusual way: by glancing alternately from the playing stage to my teacher’s face and back again—like someone watching one of my father’s tennis matches. For, yes, Mr Ascham was watching the game but I sensed he was seeing something else in it that the other five thousand people in that hall were not.

  Then, most abruptly, my teacher excused himself. ‘Stay here. I shall return shortly,’ he said before leaving the royal stage.

  I shrugged and kept watching the match, my eyes fixed on the forlorn, helpless-looking figure of Zaman.

  Head bent over the board, he was clearly flustered and confused, bamboozled by his opponent’s strategies. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. Every now and then, he sat back in his chair and looked skyward, searching the domed ceiling of the hall as if he were looking to Allah himself for aid. But today it seemed that Allah was elsewhere.

  After a time, Mr Ascham returned to the stage and resumed his seat beside me.

  ‘How goes the match?’ he asked.

  ‘Zaman is down both knights and a bishop,’ I reported. ‘But he is countering the Muscovite’s attacks a little better in this game.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ my teacher said.

  As it happened, that third game lasted much longer than the first two—Zaman, behind from the outset, battled valiantly and in a few daring moves almost recouped his early losses—but the result was the same: Vladimir won.

  The Muscovite was now up three games to none. If he won the next game, he would take the match, provide the first big upset of the tournament, and do some considerable damage to the Sultan’s pride.

  ‘I have a strange suspicion that Zaman is about to stage a remarkable comeback,’ Mr Ascham whispered to me as the pieces were reset for the fourth game and Zaman and Vladimir conversed with their respective supporters (players were forbidden to speak with their entourages during games but in between games it was allowed).

  I snorted. ‘I should think not. The Muscovite is far too good for him.’

  ‘Watch and see.’

  The fourth game began and Vladimir opened boldly, moving his pieces firmly and with confidence. On one occasion, he glanced over at his patron, the young Ivan, and threw the youth a cocksure wink.

  Then Zaman took Vladimir’s leading knight.

  In none of the previous three games had the local champion taken one of the Muscovite’s major pieces first.

  Vladimir frowned, refocused, moved a few other pieces, only for Zaman to suddenly check him, forking his king and queen with one of his own prancing knights: the very move Mr Giles had warned me about during our journey to Constantinople.

  Vladimir moved his king out of check and Zaman thumped his knight on top of the Muscovite’s queen and five thousand spectators erupted with cheers and applause and the entire hall sizzled with excitement.

  The local champion was coming back.

  Just as my teacher had predicted.

  When Zaman won that fourth game half an hour later—to the evident delight of the Sultan, the consternation of Vladimir and the utter rapture of the crowd—I threw a questioning glance at Mr Ascham.

  He just nodded and said, ‘Keep watching.’

  I did, and to my astonishment, Zaman won the next game and the next and suddenly the match was all square: three games apiece with the seventh and deciding game to be played.

  It was almost lunchtime and the other match had long ago finished (the Church’s man, Brother Raul, had defeated his fellow Spaniard, Montoya, four games to one, proving, some said, that God is still more powerful than the Holy Roman Emperor) but few in the hall had much interest in that match. The crowd only had eyes for this enthralling struggle between the skilled Muscovite and the surging local champion.

  As it unfolded, I heard several people on the royal stage comment that the seventh and final game of their match might go down in history as one of the greatest games of chess ever played.

  Zaman took Vladimir’s queen early, but the Muscovite levelled the score a few moves later, and so they battled queenless, slowly removing pieces from the board until all that remained was a perilous endgame of pawns and kings.

  The audience, both on the royal stage and among the masses, was on the edge of their seats. Every move caused loud intakes of breath, open applause or terrified gasps.

  But then Zaman—after an utterly daring play that involved sacrificing one promising pawn—promoted a seemingly isolated pawn to queen and with a few swift brutal sweeping moves, promptly cleared the board, and Vladimir—stunned at being so suddenly and ingeniously outwitted—toppled his king and the Hagia Sophia shook with deafening applause, the entire crowd rising to their feet in appreciation of the epic contest they had just witnessed.

  I stood and clapped, too, but as I did so, I saw that my teacher—alone in that crowded hall—remained rooted in his chair. He did not stand, nor did he clap.

  Indeed, as the raucous cheering subsided and the Sultan went over and shook the exhausted Zaman�
��s hand, my teacher said flatly, ‘Come, Bess. Let us go and have some lunch with Giles before his important match this afternoon. I have seen enough of this.’

  Confused, I followed him out of the Hagia Sophia.

  I had thought we would take lunch in our rooms, but Mr Ascham decided that we would eat picnic-style on a blanket out in the sunshine on the main lawn of the First Courtyard.

  Mr Giles ate in silence, contemplating, thinking, calming his mind for his upcoming match. Elsie kept looking about herself to see who passed by, hoping no doubt for a glimpse of the Crown Prince.

  I asked my teacher why we were eating in such a manner: out of doors and in our own company.

  ‘The walls of our living quarters have ears,’ he said. ‘And some of them have eyes, too. The Sultan knew of the secret note I found in Maximilian’s shoe-heel and yet I am certain Latif never saw it. The only time I mentioned its existence to anyone was to you in our rooms and I am certain you did not tell anyone about it.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ I said, suddenly trying to think of what else might have been spoken in what we had thought was the privacy of our own rooms. Elsie’s tales of her nocturnal adventures came to mind.

  ‘We sit out here,’ Mr Ascham said, ‘because I do not want the Sultan to hear the answer to the question I know you want to ask me about the chess match we just witnessed.’

  I asked the question to which he was alluding. ‘How did you know that Zaman would win? He was so far behind and had lost the first three games roundly.’

  Mr Ascham nodded. ‘Zaman had help. From above.’

  I cocked my head in disbelief. ‘Divine aid? From the Moslem god?’

  ‘No, nothing so miraculous. He had human aid. You may have noticed how, in between moves, he often sat back and scanned the heavens. Zaman was not seeking divine assistance but rather signals from a team of local chess experts sitting up in the Sultan’s private worshipping balcony. Five men were up there, hidden behind its lattice screens—out of sight from the crowds on the floor and up in the galleries—watching and analysing the match.’