The Tournament

by Matthew Reilly

  There were perhaps twelve of them and they ranged in age from about eight to sixteen. They all had grubby, dirty faces and the hollow eyes of the starving.

  I took in the grim cavern around me: islands made of garbage rose above the waterline and on these islands were a collection of crude shanties and burrows. We had stumbled upon their home. For these children, a squalid life in the dark was better than one on the streets of Constantinople.

  A tall rangy boy who was the biggest of the group stepped forward and said in common Greek to Zubaida, ‘You know not to come here, rich girl.’

  ‘Omar, please, I’m so sorry,’ Zubaida stammered. ‘We . . . we got lost.’

  The boy—Omar—stood over her, stared lasciviously at her chest. ‘You know that no intruder leaves our cavern without paying a tax. I hope for your sakes that you both have something to trade other than your bodies.’

  Zubaida looked like a trapped dog. She wore only her light cloak over her very short dress—one that she had clearly put on in anticipation of a different kind of carnal adventure that night. She had nothing else on her person and certainly nothing to trade.

  As this exchange took place, I gazed at the cluster of children gathered behind the taller Omar. Small girls with frightened eyes, little boys with defiant frowns, all dressed in soil-covered rags. And then among them I saw, not with a little shock, someone I recognised—

  But at that moment the leader, Omar, rounded on me. ‘And what of you, little girl? I have not seen you before. You are a visitor to the palace? From whence do you hail?’

  ‘I am from England,’ I said firmly in Greek. ‘Where I am the daughter of the king,’ I added, thinking a royal addendum might play to my advantage. It was not a good move.

  The boy grinned through broken teeth. ‘The daughter of a king, eh? Let me add to your education then: royal blood means nothing in the deep places of the world. You are a long way from home, princess.’ His eyes ran over my wrists and neck, as if searching for jewellery. ‘My question still stands: what can you give me in exchange for safe passage out of here?’

  Like Zubaida, I had nothing of value on my person, no rings, necklaces or coins.

  My eyes, however, found those of the individual I knew among the gang of lost children—another tall boy, thin and gangly, perhaps fifteen years of age.

  I said boldly, ‘I can give him information about the deaths of his parents.’

  ‘Information!’ the leader spat. ‘That’s not going to be—’

  The boy I recognised stepped forward.

  ‘Wait,’ he said softly.

  Omar turned, surprised that his leadership might be challenged in front of outsiders. But the second boy—as I had noted—was of roughly his age and height and thus a legitimate challenger to his authority.

  ‘I would like to hear what she has to say.’ The boy came up to me, stepping fully into the light of the torch, and I beheld the face of Pietro, the missing son of the murdered chef, Brunello of Borgia, and his wife.

  I had wondered where Pietro had gone after his parents’ suspicious deaths. I had also wondered why. One who flees a death scene, I assumed, did so because he was guilty of the crime. My teacher, I recalled, had offered a different reason for Pietro’s flight: fear.

  Now I had one answer: he had come here, to the place where orphans, runaways and other urchins of the street eked out an existence.

  I hoped I was about to find out the answer to the second question.

  Pietro stood before me.

  I recalled meeting him in his father’s kitchens on the night of the opening banquet. I had thought him shy then, quiet. Here, however, in the firelight of Zubaida’s torch in the underground cistern, his features seemed sharper, more alert.

  ‘I will give you one chance before I leave you to Omar,’ he said with a deferential nod to Omar. ‘What can you tell me of my parents’ deaths?’

  All eyes fell on me. I stood my ground and held my head high as I had seen my father do when he wanted to appear particularly regal.

  I swallowed. Then I said, ‘My teacher, whom the Sultan himself has consulted about both the cardinal’s and your parents’ deaths, believes that your mother and father did not take their own lives, but were murdered.’

  At first Pietro did not move. He just stared at me with unblinking eyes.

  Then he said, ‘Thank the Lord. I didn’t think anyone would ever believe me. My father would never commit suicide. Never. I was convinced there had been foul play, but I did not know how to prove it. I fled here because I thought I might also be in danger. Your teacher must be a most clever man.’

  ‘He is.’ He had also been right about the reason for Pietro’s flight.

  Pietro turned to Omar. ‘She has earned their passage.’

  Omar didn’t seem exactly pleased about this, but he did nothing to contradict Pietro.

  My mind, however, was racing. Mentioning the murder of Brunello and his wife had caused a storm of thoughts to rush through it.

  First, my teacher’s theory that someone—the queen or the wrestler Darius or even Brunello himself—had attempted to poison Cardinal Cardoza but had instead accidentally poisoned the visiting Cardinal Farnese.

  Mr Ascham had not believed that it had been Brunello. But I recalled my teacher’s discussion with the slave girl Sasha in the slaughter room: she had said that Brunello had argued angrily with Cardinal Cardoza in the kitchens recently.

  ‘One moment,’ I said as Zubaida backtracked toward the archway through which we had entered the children’s cistern. ‘Before he died, your father argued with Cardinal Cardoza. What did they argue about?’

  Pietro said, ‘My father was furious with the cardinal because he would not give my dead brother a Christian burial.’

  I had forgotten about Pietro’s younger brother. What was his name? Benicio. About three years younger than Pietro and of diminished mind, the younger boy had killed himself a few weeks before our arrival in Constantinople by slashing his own wrists.

  Pietro said, ‘Because my brother had taken his own life, Cardinal Cardoza denied him a Christian burial, thus condemning Benicio to an eternity in Hell. My father was appalled. All his life he had been a good Christian and he had always been obedient to the cardinal, obedient to the point of fawning. He could not believe that the cardinal could be so heartless. But the cardinal would not budge from his stance. Suicide, he said, was a crime against God. Those who took away the greatest gift God had given them, life, were forever to be denied access to the gates of Heaven. That was why they argued.’

  I had to tell Mr Ascham. Perhaps, driven by rage at the cardinal’s intransigence, Brunello had indeed tried to poison Cardinal Cardoza. But upon the death of the visiting Cardinal Farnese, the cunning Cardoza had deduced the true target of the poisoning attempt, himself, and had had the chef and his wife killed in a manner that made it appear they had committed suicide.

  ‘Thank you, Pietro,’ I said. ‘If this matter is resolved and it is safe for you to come out of hiding, I will know where to find you—’

  ‘Hey!’ A sudden shout from the far end of the darkened cistern made us all turn.

  I saw torches: three of them, small in the distance but growing larger as they approached.

  The children of the cave scattered behind columns and into their mounds of debris and garbage. Zubaida and I also ducked behind the archway through which we had been heading and peered back round it to observe what happened next.

  Omar alone waited to meet the three men who appeared out of the darkness, holding torches aloft.

  They were priests.

  Young priests whom I had seen in Cardinal Cardoza’s rooms the night before last.

  ‘Greetings, young man,’ the first priest said in Greek. ‘Peace be with you. How are you this fine evening?’ The priest said this in a bright voice that belied the somewhat foreboding surroundings.

  ‘Speak plainly, priest,’ Omar said.

  ‘Right, well,’ the priest said. ‘We
bring you food’—at this, one of the other young priests held open a cloth on which sat a freshly cooked shank of beef and a collection of baked potatoes—‘in exchange for your presence at a gathering we are holding tonight.’

  Omar’s eyes were glued to the shank.

  I saw the other children’s heads appear from their hiding holes, drawn by the delicious smell of the hot food.

  ‘How many?’ Omar said.

  ‘Three boys, one girl,’ the priest said as if he were at a market stall.

  Omar turned and spoke gruffly to the darkness in Turkish.

  ‘What is he saying?’ I whispered to Zubaida.

  ‘Omar just said, “Whose turn is it this time?”’ Zubaida said.

  At length, four children stepped out from the shadows—three boys and a girl—and the lead priest reached out a hand to guide them but Omar barked, ‘No! We eat the food first. Then you get what you desire. That’s how it works.’

  The food was handed over and to my surprise, Omar gave the first bites to the four children who had stepped forward. Once they had eaten from the proffered delicacies, they went off with the three priests, and only then did Omar and the others—Pietro among them—partake of the remaining food, eating hungrily.

  I felt a profound sadness as I watched this. So this was where the trade in human bodies began, with food for the starving given in exchange for favours for the depraved.

  Zubaida and I scurried away and after some hurried searching, found our way back to the entrance in the rose garden. Once back on the surface, we went our separate ways toward our respective rooms, glad to return to the world we knew, the world of sun and air and light, a world that for all its wickedness was still safer and more palatable than the one we had just witnessed.

  MOVEMENT IN THE NIGHT

  AFTER BIDDING ZUBAIDA FAREWELL, I hurried back to my lodgings. I wanted to tell Mr Ascham about my new theory.

  Arriving at the hallway leading to our quarters, however, I slowed my pace and trod with more caution—while Elsie was clearly very accustomed to sneaking back into her bed without waking anyone, I was not, and I did not want to disturb anybody in the neighbouring rooms and betray my night-time adventuring.

  But then as the door to our quarters came into view, it opened suddenly and I threw myself back behind some curtains.

  Fast footsteps came down the hallway and, risking a peek, I spied my teacher—clad in his oilskin overcoat and hat—striding purposefully down the corridor. He walked quickly past my hiding place, too preoccupied with wherever he was going to notice me.

  Where was he going—alone—in the middle of the night?

  The answer, of course, was obvious. Only something to do with the investigation could draw him out of doors so late.

  Although all I really wanted to do at that time was crawl into my bed and go to sleep, I worried for him. Already five people connected with our investigation had met unnatural and suspicious ends—Cardinal Farnese, the chef and his wife, Maximilian of Vienna and the virgin ‘gift’, Helena—and I did not want my teacher, venturing out alone, to be the sixth.

  And so, despite my weariness, I followed him.

  My teacher’s destination was, of all places, the Sultan’s animal menagerie.

  Getting there meant passing through three guarded gates, and at each gate I lied to the gate guards, saying that I was travelling with my master (I never called him that at any other time, as he was not my master at all, merely my teacher) and had fallen behind. Bored or not caring, they let me pass.

  I descended the broad grassy hill leading to the menagerie. A light rain fell. Leafless branches spread out above me like claws in the darkness. Then, out of the rain, the high brick wall of the menagerie appeared and there I saw the shadowy figure of my teacher pass through the menagerie’s main gate.

  I could only assume he was meeting someone—discreetly, in the dead of night—to further his investigation. I darted toward the main gate and slipped through it after him.

  The Sultan’s animal enclosure was a different place after dark. I heard the shuffle of small creatures moving over branches in the monkey cage, the deep inhalations of the sleeping bear, the grunts of a pacing tiger. The elephants, however, stomped and trumpeted anxiously, as if something was bothering them.

  The light rain made the slate stones slippery, and I trod with soft halting steps, searching for Mr Ascham.

  But the decorative trees and the ring of bushes surrounding the central bear cage now became a most inconvenient barrier to viewing the whole menagerie. All was bathed in shadows and the veil of slow-falling rain—

  The scream of rusty hinges cut through the air, then—clang!—there came the sound of a heavy gate slamming shut, followed by the click of a lock turning, then hurried footfalls outside the wall.

  My heart stopped. I spun.

  Someone had closed the main gate behind me, and then locked it, locking me—and Mr Ascham—inside the menagerie.

  I turned quickly, my eyes searching for my teacher, for another exit, for something, anything, and then in that desperate state I beheld something even more terrifying than the closing of the main gate.

  I saw that the barred door to the cage housing the three grey wolves lay open.

  THE WOLVES OF TOPKAPI PALACE

  I WOULD HAVE SCREAMED then and there for the sheer fright of it but at that moment a leather-gloved hand clamped over my mouth and yanked me back into a thick bush.

  ‘Bess, shhh,’ my teacher hissed, his eyes peering out into the darkness. ‘Be very quiet, we’re in danger. We’ve walked into a trap.’

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ I asked in a whisper.

  His eyes surveyed the menagerie as he spoke. ‘I should ask you the same question. I received a note tonight. It said that if I desired to know who killed the visiting cardinal, I was to come here after midnight, alone, without Latif, and all would be revealed.’

  ‘The wolf cage is open . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Which means the wolves are out . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  One of the elephants trumpeted again, this time more loudly. I looked over in that direction and—abruptly—through the veil of drizzling rain I saw the shadow of a large wolf slink by in front of the elephant, its head low, its legs tensed, searching for prey.

  I tapped Mr Ascham on the shoulder to point it out when without warning my teacher was thrown violently forward by a second wolf that had hurled itself into his back. That wolf now stood astride Mr Ascham, snarling and snapping, and it lunged at his throat, but my teacher rolled and lashed out with his forearm, striking the animal in the snout, and it yelped as it was hurled sideways and Mr Ascham leapt back up into a crouch.

  We hadn’t even heard it. It had stolen around behind us without so much as making a sound—

  And then I heard a snort and felt a warm wash of air touch my right ear.

  I turned my head very slowly. The third wolf stood right next to me, not a foot away, looking directly at me with its pale pitiless eyes.

  It leapt at me. I dived sideways. It missed. I rolled. It stood, its paws slipping on the wet slate stones, readying itself to leap again. It wouldn’t miss me a second time. It leapt again. I shut my eyes and threw up my arms in pathetic self-defence as I heard Mr Ascham, too far away, yell, ‘No!’

  Nothing struck me.

  Instead, I heard a pathetic yowl and the crack of breaking bone and I looked up to see the Russian bear, impossibly huge in the darkness, one of its hairy arms stretched through the bars of its cage, gripping the wolf in one of its mighty claws. It had caught the wolf by the throat in mid-lunge and snapped its neck like a twig. My sideways dive had brought me alongside its cage. The bear began to eat the wolf. I like to think the great beast rescued me, but I think it just saw the opportunity to snatch a tasty meal.

  Mr Ascham grabbed me at a run. ‘This way! Move!’

  I didn’t know where he was taking me and I didn’t care so long as it was
somewhere safe.

  I saw the two remaining wolves pair up and watch us, as if regrouping to decide how to catch this unexpectedly troublesome prey.

  Mr Ascham never stopped moving. He thrust me in through a cage door, hurried through it after me and slammed the barred door shut behind us before reaching through the bars and ramming the bolt home.

  Then he sat, breathless and panting. It took me a moment to realise where we were and when I did, I snorted appreciatively at my teacher’s solution to our predicament.

  We were in the wolves’ cage.

  A moment later, the two grey wolves stood before us, confused and confounded, pacing in obvious frustration at the easy meal that was now out of their reach.

  Mr Ascham turned to me. ‘Now. What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I saw you leave our quarters and I was worried for you, so I followed you.’

  ‘You were worried about me?’ He laughed softly. ‘I suppose subsequent events have proved your fears to have been well founded.’ He tousled my hair. ‘Thank you for worrying about me, little princess. I’m honoured to be so highly regarded in your thoughts.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked. My teeth began to chatter. I suddenly felt very cold.

  My teacher saw this and he put his arms around me. ‘There’s nothing much we can do until the animal keepers arrive in the morning. While these lodgings are not quite up to the usual standards expected for a princess, they are adequate for our current predicament. Here, stay close to me and keep warm. This excitement has put you in a state and your body is reacting adversely. Stop talking now and just breathe deeply. Hopefully, you will sleep.’

  I did as he told me, enclosed in his strong arms and his wonderfully large cloak, warmed by his body. I burrowed my head into his chest. Despite our grim surroundings, I had never in my life felt so protected, so totally enclosed by another human being. I could have stayed in his arms forever. Handsomeness be damned. With his soft round features and his big nose, Mr Roger Ascham may not have been considered fetching by the ladies of London, but with his razor-sharp mind, his kind heart and his extraordinary ability to see things through other people’s eyes, as far as I was concerned, he was the most beautiful man in the whole world. All those silly girls who had rejected Roger Ascham’s invitations to dance would never know what they had missed out on.