Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  ‘We are resiting our six heaviest cannon,’ Idris said. ‘In truth, I doubt you will live to return and report this, but even if you do – there’s nothing you can do to stop us. We outrange all your guns. The wonderful jest is that we only use Christian slaves to build the mounds. By the Sultan’s order.’

  Swan saw a man in an Italian doublet giving orders.

  ‘Surely the cream of the jest is that you use Franks to command your guns,’ he said. ‘The slaves are an afterthought.’ Even as Swan watched, the Italian gunner turned and took a cup from a slave. Swan watched the slave as he went into a fine pavilion, green and white in the late afternoon sun. He measured distances.

  Then Swan looked at the guns – behemoths capable of throwing stones that weighed hundreds of pounds. They were ready to start on the citadel, he thought, but when he looked at the mound he kept his views to himself. He thought it was mis-sited. In fact, he guessed that it was still two hundred paces too far distant from the citadel, and needed to be much, much higher. He had learned a great deal in two months on Rhodes.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said in Turkish. The engineer directing the building of the mound hid his face as Swan rode by, leading him to suspect the man was Hungarian. Deliberate mis-siting? That seemed like a one-way trip to impalement or flaying. The Sultan was not patient.

  Past the gun lines and rows of infantry trenches was a massive horse park that stretched away to the east and south, with more animals than he could count, their jaws chewing away at the grass stubble of Serbia. Coloured tents – magnificently decorated, round and square and high and low, and a few tent minarets to mark travelling mosques.

  Silently, Swan cursed himself that he had never opened the Pope’s missive. He rather needed to know what he was carrying to the Grand Turk – defiance? Alliance?

  Too late now.

  Swan wondered whether he had ever done anything as foolish as this, but then, on reflection, decided that he had, and in spades, and he smiled without meaning to.

  ‘You have ice water in your blood, brother,’ Idris said. ‘My father intends you to be flayed.’

  In fact, it made Swan want to void his bowels, but then he had only to think of Khatun Bengül … now that had been foolish.

  Swan took it all in – the layout, the slaves, the child prostitutes and the dervishes and the horse lines. The janissaries and the sipahis and the Akinjis and the delis and the ghazis.

  And then he was dismounting under the very eye of Turahanoglu Omar Reis, who was, after the Sultan, or perhaps before him, the most feared man in the Turkish Empire. He was dressed as extravagantly as the Hungarian magnates. Indeed, despite the shot of terror that Swan received seeing his broad and moustached face, he was moved to think how much Hunyadi and Omar Reis resembled one another.

  ‘Welcome,’ Omar Reis said. ‘You are most exceptionally brave, Ser Suane.’ His smile seemed broad and friendly.

  ‘My lord, it takes no courage to accept your hospitality,’ Swan answered with his deepest bow – his bow reserved for emperors, popes and really attractive women.

  More quietly, Omar Reis said, in passable Italian, ‘But what of the hospitality you took without invitation, eh, Frank?’

  Swan bowed again. In an equally low voice, he said, ‘Truly, my lord, we both know I never touched a morsel but what was freely offered. Nor would I ever speak of such.’

  Omar Reis flushed. Just for a moment, he was silent. In that moment, as if he had received a death blow, Swan felt his life pass before his eyes.

  That was stupid, he thought.

  Then Omar Reis grinned, and the grin was as savage as the silence. ‘Now, truly,’ he said in Turkish, ‘truly thou art a brave man and altogether trust in thy tripartite god.’ He nodded to the men around him, as if he’d just encountered them in the souk in Stanbul. ‘What shall we do with this brave Frank, my children?’

  Swan bowed a third time. ‘My lord, I have a message for thy master, the Sultan, from the Supreme Pontiff of the West.’

  ‘And he shall receive it in the fullness of time, when he is ready, and the time is right, o saviour of my son and jewel of my eye, and until such time as the Sultan, may his name be great, chooses to grant thee audience, we will grant thee hospitality – shall we not, my son?’

  Idris bowed silently.

  ‘Has he won thee back, this unclean Frank, this uncircumcised trickster?’ Omar Reis laughed. ‘Well, Ser Suane, perhaps thy golden tongue shall again be of benefit to thee, and perhaps not. In the meantime, there is a pavilion prepared for thee, and a fine repast, served entirely by thy fellows, good Christians all.’

  Omar Reis waved his hand, and Swan was led away, first past the complex of great silken pavilions that was the Sultan’s palace in the field, and then past another sprouting of silk pavilions that Swan gathered were the command tents and small palace of Omar Reis, and then, well to the south of those last, to a single, fine, round pavilion in the middle of a hundred others like it – Swan didn’t need anyone to tell him that he was surrounded by noble sipahis and their retainers, probably the household troops of Omar Reis and his son.

  He dismounted and a bearded, pale man with only one hand – his left – took his horse. The man cringed every time a Turk spoke or moved quickly.

  ‘My father’s notion of hospitality,’ Idris said. ‘Your groom is an Englishman.’

  Swan looked at the poor wretch, whose right stump was red and angry with infection.

  ‘Are you English?’ Swan asked in that language.

  As an answer the man fell to his knees and burst into tears. Swan dismounted, and the man knelt before him, the reins in his one good hand, his head down.

  ‘Interesting,’ Swan said in Arabic. With a fine affectation of boredom, he turned his back on the pitiful figure and walked into the pavilion. ‘If I’d known I was to stay the night, I’d have brought servants,’ he said. He turned. Idris remained mounted.

  ‘My father has provided you with all the slaves you will ever need,’ he said. His voice held censure, and pity, too. It told Swan all he needed to know. Swan stood in the doorway of his round pavilion, and looked out at the camp beyond. He saw the great green silk banner, six ells long, over the Sultan’s palace. It cracked and snapped in the wind. In the west, the sun sank towards the horizon. Gunners were going to their positions, and even as Idris opened his mouth to speak, three great guns spoke – crack, boom – boom. It was a very different sound from that on the Turkish side.

  The young man shook his head. ‘Go with God,’ he said.

  ‘Until the morning, then,’ Swan said.

  Idris looked at him, a death sentence in his eyes.

  Swan kept his smile steady, and then turned into the tent.

  Inside was a fine Italian-style bed, with a complete set of gauze hangings against insects. Two young women stood by the bed, with faces of stone.

  ‘Are you English too?’ he asked quietly.

  They both looked past him.

  ‘Greek?’ he asked in that language.

  The eyes of the nearest girl flicked to his. Then away.

  Swan nodded. This was to be a path of humiliations, one piled on another. He assumed they had no tongues, and had been brutalised in various other ways. Omar Reis certainly had access to Greek women – he was the Tyrant of Thrace.

  The smaller of the two women began to weep. Tears flowed down her face in complete silence.

  Swan nodded again, entirely to himself.

  He turned and stepped back outside. No one stopped him. He assumed that he was to be given the rope to hang himself, one way or another, and that he was watched from afar. The groom was just rising to his feet, and the dust of Idris’s departure still hung in the air. Swan went to his little borrowed mare and took the leather trunk from behind the high-backed Western saddle. He looked once more at the Sultan’s tent, and then, curious, began to walk in that direction.

  ‘Oh – lord!’ the groom called. ‘No – my lord, they’ll kill you.’

>   ‘Really?’ Swan asked. ‘Let’s just find out.’

  He strode rapidly across the two hundred paces to the first of the great tents of Omar Reis’s palace. He tried not to look around too much, but simply kept walking.

  He reached the first tent unquestioned, and began to walk around the tent ropes that spread like spider’s legs in every direction. But he didn’t slow down, and his body began to fill with a kind of agonised energy, and he kept walking.

  He wasn’t challenged as he passed within arm’s length of the site of the magnificent silk mountain that was Omar Reis’s principal tent. In fact, he was sure he could hear the Beylarbey of Thrake speaking angrily. To Idris, Swan guessed. Something about foolishness and evildoer.

  Swan knew – without even a hint of fatalism – that either his notion would work, or it would not. Almost no one would expect a dignitary – a Frank – to walk away from his pavilion and into the heart of the camp, unaided, within heartbeats of being left at his destination. Swan wasn’t acting on one of his plans. He was now improvising at the same pace as his walking. But as he got farther and farther from Omar Reis’s silk palace and towards the Sultan’s, Swan’s notions crystallised again.

  He was still lucky. God had not deserted him – or Fortuna or whatever pagan or ancient deity looked after fools, lovers and soldiers. Ahead, now, he could see men of the Sultan’s inner guard – Solaks in their long yellow kaftans and Janissaries of the duty orta in palace colours, blue silks marked with the three dark dots in a triangle of the Sultan himself, armed with ornate bills or halberds. Swan made no attempt to avoid them. Instead, approaching from Omar Reis’s encampment, he presented himself. He did not bow.

  ‘Is this the abode of the Sultan, may his name be announced with the angels?’ he asked in good court Turkish.

  ‘It is that, lord,’ said one of the guards. He bowed. Then Swan bowed.

  ‘I am Ser Thomas Suane, a knight of Saint Mark of the Grand Serenissima of Venice. I have an appointment with the Most Magnificent Sultan, King of Kings, reigning over kings, and yet no escort was sent.’ Swan reached into the breast of his short riding gown, and drew forth the Pope’s missive, which had ribbons and seals of the most impressive kind. ‘This is for the Sultan himself, gentlemen.’

  They all bowed their heads, and officers were sent for.

  Swan was betting his life that whatever enmity Omar Reis bore him, the Sultan was no part of it. If he was wrong – then he was dead. Since he guessed he was dead anyway …

  A young and very handsome Turk with the almost transparent skin and blond-brown hair of the Asian Turks came and bowed. ‘My lord, I must offer apologies. I know your name – I had no notion you were in camp.’ His Italian was full of flaws but perfectly comprehensible.

  Swan tried not to look at the horsemen currently riding around Omar Reis’s palace. It appeared they were looking for something. Swan suspected he might know what they were missing, and he was delighted to be led into the Sultan’s travelling palace. They went in a side entrance that led to a corridor of bright blue canvas and then into a vast tent whose roof towered above them – layers on layers of silk, and under his feet, silk carpets, the kind that in Venice sold for fifty or a hundred ducats. The display of wealth was staggering.

  The officer led him to a small alcove hung in bright silks, all embroidered. He was offered cushions on which to sit, but he had experience of Turkish cushions, and he knew never to sit on one in Italian clothes.

  Instead, he pulled aside a hanging and found a pair of small boys – slaves – waiting patiently. Swan was used enough to palaces, and they had a certain sameness whether they belonged to popes or emperors or sultans. The hangings were to hide the servants and the slaves and the pisspots.

  ‘Greek?’ he asked quietly.

  One of the bath boys nodded.

  Swan handed him his little bag, keeping only his purse and eating implements. ‘Keep this here,’ he said in Greek. ‘I am the Lord Thomas, and I command you not to allow anyone to move this until I return for it.’

  The boy bowed and made obeisance.

  Swan straightened his clothes, brushed some dust away, and pushed the pricker from his eating kit into the skin-tight sleeve of his borrowed doublet.

  Then he was taken from the antechamber into a room full of guards, where he was searched. They took his folding spoon and eating knife and bowed, full of courtesy. No one searched his sleeves, nor was there any reason for them to do so.

  After all, he was an ambassador from the Pope.

  He patted his chest to reassure himself that he still had the Pope’s letter, and waited to be announced. There were half a dozen other men waiting with him, now – a pair of Serb or Albanian converts, whose shame was writ plain on their faces, and another European, in Western clothes and a breastplate, who gave Swan a curious half-smile, and a janissary officer with a scroll, and a pair of eunuchs. Swan expected to be made to wait, but it was agony, and he thought of Omar Reis’s men discovering him gone, and where they would look …

  The Albanians were summoned, and Swan could hear the Sultan’s voice. It could be none other – no one but Mehmet II could sound so self-important. Then the eunuchs were summoned, and then a dervish, and then the janissary, who took a long time.

  ‘Are you a gunner, too?’ the European soldier asked.

  Swan nodded. ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

  ‘Christ, I hate being summoned,’ the man said. From his accent, he was northern Italian – Friulian or Udinian. Or just possibly Savoyard.

  Swan made an appreciative murmur.

  ‘He orders people killed. All the time. For fuck all.’ The gunner shrugged. ‘You new?’ he asked.

  ‘Just got here today,’ Swan said.

  The Italian was sweating as much as Swan himself. ‘Well, if we both survive this, come by for wine,’ the man said.

  ‘Your tent is green and white,’ Swan said. ‘By the new battery.’

  The Italian smiled. ‘You are a gunner,’ he said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Aren’t you going to be out of range?’ he asked.

  The Italian shrugged elaborately. ‘We have all the time in the world. And this morning, one of our – how shall I say – compatriots was killed by an arrow because his battery was too close. I’ll move up when they have cleared the lower city.’ He pulled his doublet down as a fat eunuch emerged from the Sultan’s chamber. ‘Ah; my turn. Wish me luck.’

  Swan bowed. ‘Wine in an hour,’ he said with as much cheer as he could muster.

  If the Italian master gunner had trouble with the Sultan, Swan didn’t hear. He stood, his nerves on edge but outwardly composed, until the hangings parted and the eunuch returned. He nodded pleasantly to Swan.

  ‘You are ready?’ he asked in good Italian.

  What if I say no? Swan thought. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He entered the presence. The Sultan was seated alone on a large embroidered cushion with a leather side, and taking sherbet … iced sherbet. He took a sip, his eyes rose from the cup in pleasure, and he caught sight of Swan.

  Swan made his deepest bow. He repeated the bow twice more approaching the Sultan, who sat under a great awning, a superbly embroidered silk, which hung from the almost infinitely high roof of the great tent. At the second bow, Swan almost fell, because sitting just behind the Sultan was Omar Reis, and he was smiling like a wolf contemplating a doe.

  ‘Ah, Ser Thomas!’ said the Sultan. ‘I am told we have met before, although, in truth, I have no memory of you.’

  Swan bowed a third time, and then, eyes modestly downcast, he began the ritual benediction with which an ambassador greeted the Prophet’s sword-arm on earth. Swan knew all the phrases off by heart, and his flowers of felicity and his pearls of wisdom flowed off a tongue that might otherwise have been paralysed in terror. But once he was started, he knew the speech.

  The Sultan was bored, and Swan knew it by the way he put aside his sherbet. Swan finished carefully, however, and stood, collected.
/>   ‘You have a gift? From the Council of Ten, perhaps?’ the Sultan asked.

  Swan bowed again. ‘No, great King. I have no gift, as we are presently enemies, locked in war.’

  The Sultan raised an eyebrow. ‘I have no enmity for the Lion of Saint Mark, unless she should provoke me. Are you not a servant of the Serenissima?’

  Swan knew this song all the way to the last refrain. ‘Great Lord, in Italy, where I am a soldier, small men like me serve various lords in turn, sometimes this one and sometimes that. When last I came into your sublime presence, I was a servant of the Bishop of Ostia and we came on a Venetian ship, but now I come before you as an ambassador of the Bishop of Rome, the Pontiff of the Western Church.’

  ‘Ah,’ the Sultan said. ‘Is this a promotion?’ he asked.

  Swan thought he had best take the question seriously. ‘Yes, Great Lord,’ he said.

  The Sultan nodded. ‘You are, I note, a knight of Venice.’

  Swan made himself smile. The threat – the subtle Turkish threat, that any action of his would reflect on Venice – was clear.

  ‘I am an Englishman,’ he said, with a shrug that he was proud of. His shrug dismissed Venice and his Venetian knighthood as things of no consequence whatsoever. ‘And knighthoods are cheaper than gold,’ he said, in Turkish.

  The Sultan half-raised one eyebrow. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are a mercenary?’

  Swan thought before delivering his reply, but the first one that came to him seemed the best. Some imp of Satan, guiding his words …

  ‘Sometimes I fight for free,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, yes.’

  The Sultan didn’t smile, but neither did he frown. ‘You have something for me, if not a gift.’

  Swan bowed deeply – his fifth bow – and gave the letter to an equerry, who lay full length before the Grand Turk and handed him the letter. The Sultan gave it to a chamberlain, who cut the seals.

  ‘You have read this, English mercenary?’ the Sultan asked.