From the shadow of the hat her dark eyes regarded him. ‘These are my people,’ she said quietly. ‘These that you are calling devils.’
‘These are nothing to do with you. They are devils,’ he said flatly. ‘They took my father and my mother from their own safe fields and I don’t know where they are now, or even if they are alive.’
She started to put out her hand to him, and then she remembered Isolde’s jealous rage and tucked both her hands firmly in the jacket pockets. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.
Freize stood one side of her and Luca the other. From the sailmaker’s loft came four men, carrying a heavy rolled sail on their shoulders. Further down the quayside a dozen men carrying ropes slung under a long mast were walking in slow step towards the fort.
The captain of the fort came forwards to meet them. ‘Are you all carrying knives?’ he asked. They nodded in silence. ‘Keep them hidden until I give the word,’ he said. ‘If they keep the peace then we will too. If anything goes wrong fall back on the fort.’ To Ishraq he said, ‘Warn us at once if you suspect anything.’
She nodded. ‘I understand.’
He glanced at Luca. ‘Are you ready, Inquirer?’
Luca nodded, and they led the way past the fort to where the quayside sloped down to the sea and the galley was held to the harbour wall by two waiting men. One of them was a tall broad man from the coast of Benin, his black face completely impassive, his dark eyes scanning each one of them as they walked towards him. The other was a tall white man, blond-haired and blue-eyed. The master of the galley stood in the stern of his ship, the drummer beside him.
The master was a young man, little more than eighteen, richly dressed in a pair of wide navy brocade pantaloons with beautiful red leather short boots. He had a richly embroidered white linen shirt, the sleeves billowing, and a surcoat over the top, encrusted with precious stones. At his side he wore a belt with a long curved sword and on his head – strangest of all for Luca – was a tight small white turban with a stone and the white floating plume of egrets’ feathers at the front. His skin was tanned golden, his eyes dark, squinting now against the bright sky as he looked up at the quay as the Christians arrived, followed by the men carrying the sail and the long mast. He stood like a young man filled with joy in his own strength and confidence, accustomed to command. He was, as even Luca could see at once, dazzlingly handsome.
Luca, the captain of the fort, Freize and Ishraq came to the brink of the quay so that they could look down into the slaving galley; it was a pitiful sight. Every oar had two men chained to it, and there were forty, perhaps fifty oars. That was only the first deck. Below the enslaved rowers was another deck with another set of men chained to their oars, dressed in rags, burned brown as dried nuts from the constant blaze of the sun, sitting in their own filth, dully awaiting the order of the pounding drum. Luca gave a horrified exclamation and stepped back, cupping his palm over his nose and mouth against the stench, trying not to retch.
‘Will you help us to fit the mast?’ the master asked.
Ishraq listened carefully to his accent, looked from the one man onshore to the other, strained to get a sense of their purpose, to see if there was double-dealing planned here. Unnoticed, she eased her feet out of the ill-fitting shoes. If she was going to have to run or fight, she was not going to stumble.
‘First, you will release the Italians,’ Luca said, his anger in every clipped word.
‘Are you in command here?’ the young man asked politely, bowing his head a little. The great ruby in his turban winked in the sunlight. ‘Are you the one that he said was an Inquirer? From Rome?’
‘I am visiting the town. The commander of the defence is this captain,’ Luca explained.
‘You are a traveller?’
Luca nodded.
‘Appointed by the Pope?’
‘I am a papal Inquirer,’ Luca said. ‘But it is no business of yours. What are you doing here?’
He laughed as if something had amused him. ‘Oh, I have been inquiring too – I take an interest in coastal defences.’
Ishraq eased towards Luca. ‘He’s a very senior commander,’ she muttered. ‘See the ruby in his turban and the jewels in his coat.’
‘Where are you going to?’ Luca asked.
‘Homeward bound,’ he showed them a taunting smile. ‘We call it home now. You called it Constantinople, but we call it Istanbul. Do you know why?’
At the new name that the conquering infidels had given to the Christian city of Constantinople, Brother Peter hissed in horror and crossed himself. The commander laughed at the gesture. ‘We named it from the Greek.’
Luca, who had not been taught Greek, gritted his teeth on his own ignorance.
‘The Greek istimbolin means “in the city”. We are in the city now and we will never lose it. So we have called it In-the-city.’
‘What’s your name?’ Luca asked.
‘Radu Bey,’ he replied. ‘Yours?’
‘Luca Vero.’
‘Priest?’
‘Novice.’
‘Ah, I know who you are,’ he said with sudden understanding. ‘You’re one of those commanded to make inquiry for the secret order. You will be a servant of the Order of Darkness.’
Luca exchanged a quick shocked glance with Brother Peter. ‘What do you know of the Order of Darkness?’ he demanded.
‘More than you would think. A lot more than you would think. Am I right?’
‘I don’t discuss it with you.’
‘Do you know your commander? Milord, does he call himself? Do you know any other Inquirers?’
Luca kept his face impassive.
‘I think not,’ the commander said in Arabic, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just how I would do it.’
‘He said “I think not . . . it’s just how I would do it,” ’ Ishraq translated in Luca’s ear.
‘First, the children,’ Luca said, as the Piccolo men, sweating, dumped the long heavy mast beside the folded sail.
‘Will you take them, whether they want to come with you or no?’ Radu asked. ‘Will you take them against their will?’
‘No, of course not. But why would they choose to go into slavery with you?’
‘Because they are not going to be enslaved. They’re going to be janissaries. The greatest soldiers in the world. They might rise through my army, they could become commanders.’ He smiled at Luca, inviting him to see the joke. ‘When we conquer Italy, they could be the ones riding at the head of the invading army, the triumphant army. Either one of them could rise to be governor, and come back to his home as a lord. He could march into his own village, he could live in the castle in the place of the Christian lord. They may prefer this future to coming back to plough the fields and muck out stables for you.’
Luca ignored him and called directly to the children. ‘Do you want to come ashore? I will see that you get back to your homes. You have been saved from the flood by a miracle. Do you want to come home now and go back to your father and mother and serve God?’
‘They are brothers,’ Radu remarked, watching them. ‘And their father beat them every day, and their mother starved them. That’s why they ran away in the first place. I don’t think they’ll want to go back home.’
‘I can put you into a monastery,’ Luca offered. ‘You can live and work in the Church. That’s how I was raised, and Freize my friend here. It was all right. We ate well, we were educated.’
‘But you didn’t learn Greek,’ the slave galley commander taunted him.
‘That hardly matters,’ Luca said, irritated.
Clearly the boys did not know what to do.
‘My brother and I were both taken by the Ottomans,’ Radu remarked to the boys. ‘We might be an example to you. We chose different routes. He went home to the Christians and is now a great commander; one of the greatest, a man of high ambition, advisor to the Pope himself. You could take his path and rise as well as he did. You could go with these men; I am sure they would put
you in a safe place.
‘But consider me! I stayed in the Empire and I am as great a commander as my brother. I eat better than him, I am certain that I am better dressed, and I am on the winning side. The Ottoman Empire is over-running the world, our frontiers expand every year. We award merit not accident of birth. If you are clever and hard-working you will rise. Now you two can choose. By luck – by the breaking of a mast and the loss of a sail you are free to choose. Not many boys get such a choice. It is a moment of destiny – fate – funny that it should come to two such little boys as you.’
‘We’ll go with you,’ the eldest boy said. He looked up at the handsome face. ‘You promise that we can stay together and that we will not be made slaves?’
‘You will live with a family of Turks in the country, and they will feed you and educate you. You will have to work hard but you will be trained as soldiers. You will be forbidden to marry or take up any trade but soldiering. When you are big and strong enough, you will join the army and serve the Sultan Mehmet II, as I do. His command runs from Wallachia to Armenia and there’s no doubt that you will march into Christendom, to the very gates of Vienna and beyond, to Paris, to Rome, to Madrid, to London. Every year we advance. Every year the Christians are defeated and fall back before us. You will be on the winning side under my command. The Christians say themselves that the end of days is coming for them. They predict that the world will end: we know that it will be us who ends it for them.’
‘We will never be defeated,’ Luca said fiercely. ‘You lie to the boys. We will never be defeated and you will never ride into Vienna, for we are under the hand of God.’
‘Inshallah, we are all under the hand of God,’ the Muslim said quietly. ‘But clearly, even you must see, that us both believing this makes no difference to who wins the battles. At the moment, as you must see, we are winning.’
‘We will never renounce our faith!’
‘We don’t ask you to. You can believe what you like. You can even pray as you like. But we will rule all of Christendom.’
‘Come home!’ Luca exclaimed, holding out both hands to the boys as if he would have them jump on shore.
The eldest boy shook his head. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said with careful politeness, ‘but this man saved us from the flood and will teach us to be soldiers like him. We’ll stay with him.’
‘Don’t you want to see your home again? Your mother and your father?’
‘Not at all,’ the boy said clearly. ‘They treated us worse than their hounds. We will make a new home.’
Luca stepped back, looked at Brother Peter. ‘I have no words,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I have failed these children twice over. Once when I could not foresee the wave, and now I cannot stop them selling their souls to the Devil.’
Radu smiled. ‘Cheer up, Inquirer! The galley slaves won’t choose to stay with me. They are all yours, poor wretches. Now, I’ll have to unchain them. I will have to take my men and go down among them.’
The commander of the fort, Captain Gascon, glanced at Luca, who was still silent, looking at the children. ‘You can go down slowly and unchain them,’ Gascon ordered, tightening his grip on the gun. ‘No tricks.’
Radu Bey nodded to the man with the drum who unsheathed a massive blade, and stepped down behind him, on guard. He barked an order in Arabic. Luca glanced at Ishraq who nodded and whispered, ‘He said: “Who is Italian?” ’
Several men raised their heads and called out: ‘Eccomi!’
One man responded a little after the others.
‘Dove sei nato, pretendente?’ snapped Radu Bey.
The rower stumbled to understand the simple Italian sentence. ‘Napoli,’ he stammered, naming an Italian town, but speaking unconvincingly late with a Spanish accent.
‘I don’t think so,’ Radu Bey said simply, and the man dropped his head to his oar and gave himself up to despair.
‘We have to release them all,’ Luca exclaimed, watching this doomed exchange. ‘All the slaves. We have to attack the galley and get them free.’
‘We can’t,’ the captain of the fort shook his head. ‘There are too many of them.’ He nodded to the ship; seated among the slaves were free men, the janissaries of the Ottoman army, ready to row or fight as the captain ordered. All down the centre of the ship were their comrades, armed with great scimitars and cutlasses, handguns stuck casually in their belts. ‘They’ll have cannon mounted in the prow,’ he said. ‘Rolled back out of sight for now, but it will be armed and ready to fire. They’ve lost a mast but they can still take this ship out to sea at fighting speed. I’ll be happy if he just keeps to his word and we get the Italians off without trouble.’
‘My father may be enslaved on one of these hellholes!’ Luca said, anguished.
‘Let’s do what we can here today,’ Freize advised quietly. ‘See if we can get some men freed, then think about the rest.’
Radu Bey had been moving steadily and quietly among the ranks of the oarsmen, turning one key and then another. The freed men rose carefully to their feet, wary of the armed men around them, and put their hands on their heads, turning around as they were bid and walking through their fellows without looking to either left or right. Seven men from the upper deck went unsteadily up a narrow gangplank to the quayside, and then three came up from the lower. As they touched the stone of the quayside some of them fell to their knees to thank God. One man’s legs buckled from being seated at his oar for so long that he sank to the ground, and he could not rise up again.
‘Get them away,’ the captain of the fort said to the men who had brought the sail. ‘Poor devils! Take them to the hovel where they put the lepers, and get them washed and fed and kept there.’
‘That’s my side of the bargain,’ Radu Bey said, indifferent both to the men crying with relief on the quay and those groaning in the galley. ‘Will you help fit the mast?’
‘We won’t set foot on your ship,’ Gascon replied. ‘We’ll leave the sail and the mast here and you can fit it yourself. If you’re not gone by sunset I will turn the cannon on you, as you wait here.’
‘We’ll be gone,’ Radu assured him. ‘And we won’t come back, as I promised. Will you sell us some food?’
‘I’ll send some down to you, and fresh water. Give water to these poor devils.’
‘I should like to go onto the ship,’ Brother Peter suddenly said, surprising everyone. ‘I should like to go among the rowers with the priest and hear confessions of the men, and bless them.’
Radu laughed abruptly. ‘What for? Do you think you will raise them from the dead? For these men think they are dead and gone to hell. Don’t come down, priest. We’ll eat you instead of bread.’
Brother Peter hesitated. ‘I should bless them,’ he insisted.
The commander of the galley did not even bother to reply. The fair man who was holding the rope on the shore laughed. ‘Half of them are converted to the Muslim faith anyway,’ he volunteered, speaking Italian with a strong English accent.
‘Are you English?’ Luca exclaimed.
‘Captain Marcus, English privateer, advising General Radu Bey.’
‘Are you enslaved?’
‘Oh no. I am paid. I am going to command my own galley next year. I am a free man, a commander, serving the Empire. I’m a volunteer, a mercenary.’
‘How can you do this to your fellow Christians?’ Brother Peter demanded, trembling.
‘It’s a hard world,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘I used to ship slaves from Ireland for the French. Then I was on an English privateer preying on the Spanish. I don’t mind the nationality, I do mind being on the winning side. Right now, I am on the winning side. The Ottoman Empire is unstoppable, take my word for it.’
‘I shall send my men on shore for the mast,’ Radu interrupted, snapping his fingers to half a dozen men who came forwards and waited for their orders. ‘Can I come onshore to dine?’ Radu spoke directly to Luca. ‘Will you ask me to dinner?’
‘You are the enemy
of my country, and my church, and my family,’ Luca replied.
‘So think of me as on parole,’ Radu Bey suggested. ‘Why not bring some food and set a table here, and we can dine and talk while they are repairing the ship.’
‘You’ll have to disarm,’ Luca said, looking at the wicked curved sword.
‘Of course. And you have to swear not to kidnap me. We have to dine as friends and then part as enemies.’
Luca hesitated.
‘I know Plato,’ Radu Bey said temptingly. ‘Pliny too. I have a manuscript with me that I take everywhere I go. It talks about this coast, it tells of a wave. The ancients knew about this. It’s in Arabic, but I’ll read it to you over dinner.’
‘It tells of a wave?’ Luca repeated.
‘And it has a map.’
‘I’ll get the table set,’ Luca ruled, tempted beyond bearing at the thought of the ancient learning.
‘Take care,’ Gascon whispered to him.
‘If they know how to tell that a wave is coming, we have to learn the secret.’
While the servants came out from the inn under Freize’s watchful supervision, and set up the trestles and board midway along the quayside, Ishraq went back and released Isolde from the hidden laundry room and told her that Luca was dining with an infidel.
‘How could he?’ Isolde demanded. She peered out of the doorway of the inn to where Luca was standing at the end of the quay, watching Radu strip himself of a small arsenal of weapons and lay them down on the cobblestones.
Ishraq hesitated. She could not describe the power and charm of Radu, glittering in his beautiful clothes on the boat that could move so swiftly and powerfully in the water, hold still like a bird of prey, hanging in the water like a peregrine falcon hangs in the air, or fold its oars like wings to come close to the harbour wall, docile as a collar dove.
‘Luca wants to talk to him,’ she said. ‘He wants to know all about Arab learning.’
‘He’s walking very close to sin,’ Brother Peter said, coming upon the girls. ‘And danger.’
Order of Darkness Page 40
