Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Ser Zane was fastidious in his use of his axe. He cut an Akinji from his saddle and then grabbed the dead man’s bridle.

  ‘Horse meat,’ he said. ‘O horse, I name thee sausage.’

  Men looting the bodies looked up and laughed.

  Ladislav ran up, his face black. ‘Run!’ he cried. ‘Run! I have lit the powder!’

  Swan had no real idea what the mad Bohemian meant, but he forced his legs to carry him over the broken ground.

  And then they all scrambled up the ruined stone slope that had once been a wall and made their way as best they could down the far side, and into the ruins of what had once been Belgrade.

  There was a massive burst of flame, a huge white cloud, and then a long, dull clap of thunder. Everyone was either knocked flat or threw themselves prone.

  Swan opened the sides of his armet.

  ‘What the hell did you do?’ he asked Ladislav.

  The former Hussite laughed and pointed at his ears.

  Swan awoke with pain in his right shoulder and in his lower back, to find that he had slept in his harness. He’d never done so before, that he could remember, and his waist hurt from the bite of the backplate, and his mouth seemed to be full of sand.

  One by one, the company awoke. They filled one corridor in the lower citadel and the two rooms that led from it, and most of the men had simply lain on the floor. A few had covered themselves with blankets from habit, but the heat was enough to boil a man, even in the dark.

  It was now full daylight.

  Moving slowly, with joints that ached and clumsy fingers, Swan got his shoulders out of the harness, and then Ser Columbino awoke and helped him with the rest. He managed to work up a sweat just getting out of his harness.

  He had a sudden moment of panicked worry that Clemente had died in the sortie. Why else was his harness still on him? But the Italian boy was snoring away round a corner.

  ‘You told him to sleep,’ Columbino said. ‘Then you sort of stumbled, and you were out.’

  ‘Sweet Jesu, I am tired,’ Swan said. He drank water from his canteen, spat, and drank again, and then went and searched for a chamber pot. The rooms seemed to have been stripped. In the end he went down into the great courtyard to relieve himself, and the bells rang. It was mid-afternoon.

  The Turkish guns were firing.

  Swan missed Peter.

  He exchanged news with one of Szilagyi’s officers, and by the time he made the climb back to their barracks, most men were moving, although, like Swan, most seemed to wish they were not. But the pages went out and returned with bread, and some sausage and watered wine. The food seemed like manna, and they ate together, sitting on the floor, while the guns fired on and on.

  ‘Lord Szilagyi says that the Turks have sited their new battery,’ Swan said to Di Silva and Columbino. The two senior knights sat with their backs to the wall and their legs stretched out before them. Clemente was pouring wine from a canteen. The company men had filled their personal canteens, most of them good German copper work, tin-lined, with strong red Hungarian wine. This morning it had a metallic taste, but it was still wine. Men with the heavier pottery canteens were spared the taste, at least.

  Swan savoured a mouthful of wine. ‘I thought I was dead last night,’ he said.

  Di Silva managed a laugh. ‘You must think this a great deal,’ he said. He toasted Swan with his canteen.

  ‘Clemente, go and enjoy your own food and stop hovering,’ Swan said.

  Just as he finished the order, a Turkish gun – a great gun – spoke from quite close.

  The ball must have struck somewhere close on the main wall of the citadel. The room shook, plaster dust fell, and one of the wooden panels of the coffered ceiling knocked Sam Cressy on the head and laid him on his back.

  ‘Blessed Mary and all the saints,’ Ser Niccolo muttered.

  It was but a harbinger of the next hours. It became clear that the Turks had moved their main battery, and the enormous siege guns were now playing directly on the citadel itself.

  They fired steadily, with long pauses between. The pauses seemed to sap Swan’s will … he found himself listening for the guns, and then relaxing only in the first seconds after each shot fired. By the fifth or sixth hit, the painted plaster that coated the stone walls was cracked and chunks were flaking away, making the rooms look like ruins, and farther down the great corridor, a direct hit to the outer wall caused an explosion of stone shards from the inner face that scattered like hackbut bullets into the wounded men in the hospital, killing two and terrifying the doctors and women nursing.

  The sun began to go down. Swan wasn’t sure what day it was, but after he’d counted and puzzled, he thought it must be Tuesday, and Clemente agreed with the sort of wry look boys save for grown men who lose count of days. Swan ate a second meal covered in plaster dust, and the guns continued.

  Tempers flared. Swan could tell his men were tired, and tense – Ser Niccolo snapped at one of Orietto’s pages, got a short answer, and put his hand on his dagger before sense prevailed. Two of the Italian pages drank too much and began to scream at each other until Columbino knocked their heads together. Morbioli went up on the walls and came down shaking his head.

  ‘Tonight or tomorrow, the Turks will attack,’ he said. ‘The breaches in the outer walls are so big that the term “wall” has lost its meaning.’

  At midnight, Swan’s company went on duty. It took an effort of will to get back into his harness, and only the knowledge that he had to set an example got him through it. He walked the battlements, and imagined a dozen deaths as Turkish round shot struck the walls beneath his feet and the walls shook. But the fortress of Belgrade was heavily built, and although great cracks appeared in the masonry, no breach was opened and no wall section fell to rubble.

  Dawn came. The heat was prickly even before the first red rays of the sun came down, and there was not a cloud in the sky. Everything stank – of death, of close-pressed, dirty men and crushed stone and sulphur and hot metal.

  But Swan made himself climb the main tower in his section of wall. He summoned Ser Niccolo Zane and Ser Columbino, as well as Ser Antonio Morbioli, Orvietto’s ensign. Hugh Willoughby and Will Kendal came unsummoned, but were no less welcome.

  Swan looked down on the Turkish camp and the siege line. From the top of the fortress of Belgrade, the muzzles of the Turkish guns now seemed to press against the outer walls of the lower town. Now there were even breaches in the tall stone walls of the upper town, and damage to the citadel itself.

  Uncountable myriads of slaves like human ants poured out of the Turkish camp and began to work on the Turkish lines, repairing damage to the gun emplacements and carrying heavy beams and filled sacks to improve existing positions … and build new ones.

  They all watched in horrified fascination for some time. A bell tolled for matins far below them.

  ‘Hunyadi is here,’ Ser Niccolo said.

  Swan looked at him.

  Ser Niccolo nodded slowly. ‘He came in the last boat. He is here. With two hundred knights of his banderium.’

  Swan nodded. He looked out over the edge. Clemente handed him a cup, full to the brim of wine, and Swan handed it around to his officers.

  ‘I think the Turks will come today,’ he said.

  ‘Tonight,’ Di Silva said. ‘They’ll use slaves and gunners to tire us all day while the janissaries sleep. Then, full of bhang and opium, they’ll attack at twilight.’

  Columbino shrugged. ‘How do you guess these things?’ he asked.

  Swan looked out over the wall, and pulled his head in when an arrow clattered on the stone. ‘They own the out-walls and they can have the lower town any time,’ he said. ‘If they plan to breach the citadel, they need to mount their guns in the lower town and then take the upper. And perhaps take the water gate and the cannon towers, all now in our hands. So there will be an assault on the lower town. And either Hunyadi cedes them the lower town – in which case the fortress’s days are numb
ered – or he makes a fight of it.’

  Di Silva nodded. ‘You begin to get the hang of this game, young Englishman.’

  Ser Niccolo rubbed the stubble on his face as if annoyed. ‘For the love of God, let us get some sleep now, if that’s what you old Turk-fighters think.’

  Kendal peered out over the battlements cautiously, and then turned back. ‘Where would Lord Hunyadi be “making a fight”?’ he asked.

  ‘Down in the lower town,’ Swan said. ‘It will be hellish.’

  Kendal shook his head. ‘Not a good fight for archery. Dark, bad footing, not much cover.’

  Swan agreed. ‘If we go down, you lads stay up here and do what you can.’

  ‘We need more arrows,’ Kendal said. ‘I’ve just one. The Turkish arrows are too short, and the Hungarian arrows are too light. Better than nothing, but they flex too much in the air.’

  Swan sent Clemente to see whether the garrison had any thick-diameter shafts, and then he went, unarmed with Di Silva’s help, drank a quart of water, and slept against an inside wall.

  He woke with a start to a shower of plaster dust. He found himself looking into the surprisingly white face of the slave they’d rescued … he couldn’t make out – a week before?

  She wore the coarse brown over-gown of one of the serving sisters. The fortress was full of nuns and working women.

  She sat back on her heels. ‘I’m sorry, despotes,’ she said. ‘I was sent to fetch you.’

  Swan smiled at her. In Greek, he said, ‘What’s your name?’

  She made an odd motion with her head, neither a nod of agreement nor a head-shake but a curious circular motion. ‘Maria Myrophora,’ she said. ‘At least, that is what I was called when I was Greek.’

  She had a small copper pot of beautiful chicken broth, from which he slurped hungrily.

  ‘The voivode wants to see you,’ she said.

  He ate the bread she offered, drank the rest of the broth, and then drained another quart of water. It was already hotter than any day so far, even in the cool stone corridors.

  A big gun fired. The strike of the ball against the fabric of the wall was almost instantaneous; boom – whackkkk. Swan flinched, but Maria didn’t.

  ‘It was much the same at Constantinople,’ she said with resignation.

  ‘We will defeat the Turks here,’ Swan said.

  ‘Lord Hunyadi says the same,’ Maria conceded. Her voice had exactly the intonation of a child’s when she is aware she is being deceived by her parents.

  Di Silva rolled over. ‘Christ on his cross – Ser Suane, we are in the middle of a siege, being pounded by the Turks, and you have found a beautiful angel to feed you chicken soup.’ He laughed. ‘I’ll take some of the soup,’ he added.

  ‘This courteous gentleman would like some of your soup,’ Swan said in Greek.

  ‘The sisters have enough for all your company. It is time to awake. The Turks are marshalling for their assault.’ The Greek woman made this comment as if it was common knowledge. Indeed, it probably was, with the soldiers of the Compagnia di Santa Maria Magdalena the last to know.

  By the time Swan got into the courtyard, he reckoned it was after midday. But there were no clocks, and the steady pounding of the guns was the only sign of the passage of time. He was cheered, on his way to the Ban’s tower, to find the women doing laundry.

  ‘You have fresh water today?’ he asked Elspet. ‘How much for a tub in which to wash myself? I feel like … like …’

  ‘Like a man bathed in plaster and stone dust, eh?’ she asked. ‘Hmm. A golden ducat of Venice, my lord, and I will have a washtub and hot water for you.’

  Swan promised her the gold coin – the most expensive bath of his life – and continued to his meeting with the voivode.

  He was, despite the delay, early. Lord Szilagyi was there, and Pongrácz Dengelegi, known to most of the crusaders as Pangratrius, and he shook Swan’s hand warmly. Neither man was in harness, but their armour was on wooden stands, ready to hand.

  Hunyadi wore a long kaftan lined in silk, and had mail on under it, but no other armour. He came in from the tower stairs at the other end of his hall, and sat in a light Italian camp chair.

  ‘Ser Suane,’ he said. ‘A brilliant feat of arms, burning the Sultan’s tent. That was you?’ He grinned.

  Swan had come to like Hungarians, and he felt that he could enter into their sense of humour. ‘I might have had something to do with it,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps a frightened slave overset a lantern.’

  The voivode laughed. ‘Well, I must confess, English, that you and your friends have helped with several thorny moments. But now …’ He stopped to greet two Hungarians and a Serb, all men of the garrison. They were introduced in a welter of foreign names, and all Swan received was an impression of fatigue, of bruises under bloodshot eyes.

  The last lord to enter was the German, Von Ewald. He bowed to Swan, and said, in German, ‘So you have beaten us here all the same.’

  Swan didn’t trust his German, so in Latin he said, ‘Still, you are in time for the party,’ which made the big German knight smile.

  ‘Now we are all together,’ Hunyadi said. ‘In a few hours, the Turks will attack. They will attack with everything they have, aware that plague has begun in their camp and that their hold on the siege is fragile. Indeed, my friends, I believe that if we can hold through the darkness tonight, we will be the victors here. I am tempted merely to let their assault roll into the lower town and wash against my walls like the sea on a rocky shore.’ He looked at them, and his eyes burned.

  The ring twinkled on Hunyadi’s finger.

  ‘But by God, gentlemen, I want a victory, and no mere survival. I want to see the Turks beaten, and I am willing to risk this rock to make it so.’

  The officers of the garrison seemed to slump. The Serb – Georges something – shook his head. ‘My people are sick with fatigue and lack of sleep,’ he said. ‘They will fight like tired children.’

  The two Hungarian officers nodded. But they didn’t speak.

  Hunyadi looked at Swan, as if he had to be swayed. ‘You know, the mad Dominican often sounds like a raving, barking dog. But yesterday he preached a sermon about how we are all a huddle of sinners – degenerates and Jews, I think he said. And he said that this will only go further to prove the power of the favour of God, because God can work even through us.’

  The silence in the room was total.

  ‘I have seen many victories; yes, and many defeats. But the last ten days have seen a series of miracles. Almost every throw of the dice has gone our way.’ Hunyadi drew himself to his full height. ‘If ever the Turks are to be beaten … it is now. They have stretched their supply lines too far. Vlad Tepes is harrying them night and day. They have lost their river fleet. The plague stalks their camp and has yet spared ours. Now, gentlemen. Do you want half a victory, with the Turks slinking away after some token demand of homage, leaving us to do it all again next summer? Or do you want to beat the Turks? Will you fight?’

  In that moment, Swan’s love for Hunyadi was immense. The power of his voice – the intensity of his gaze – the promise of his charisma. He seemed to embody victory.

  Swan heard his own voice. ‘I will fight,’ he said. He was surprised at himself.

  And then the others were speaking, one by one – even the exhausted Serb.

  ‘Good,’ Hunyadi said. ‘My plan is simple. And like all good plans, it depends on the enemy seeing what they most desire to see. We will let them have the lower town after a fight. And then we will lead them into the upper town, where the walls are breached in only two places. And then …’

  After a careful explanation, Hunyadi led them to the top of the tower and pointed out the salient fixtures – the covered wall that the Christian pioneers were building across the middle of the lower town, the pretence of filling the breaches whereas in fact the peasants were digging trenches behind them. And the great piles of sulphur-dipped brush – bone dry – that was gathered al
l along the central spine of the courtyard and all along the walls.

  Hunyadi had a German clock. It pointed to the first hour of the afternoon.

  ‘I will bet that the Turks will attack between three and four,’ he said. ‘They will throw the ghazis at us first, and then waves and waves of lesser soldiers – all the Albanians and Greeks they can muster, all the untrusted converts. And then, if we stop them, they will throw the main assault at around eight. Janissaries. In heavy armour. And that’s when we follow my plan.’ He smiled. ‘Assuming we’re all still alive to follow it.’

  Swan returned to his men and outlined their role and the timings. Then he went to the courtyard with an armload of clean linen and took a bath that cost him a ducat. He sold his dirty bathwater to Columbino for a heavy silver soldo and rose, dripping and clean and feeling better than he had felt in two weeks, to put on fresh linens for the first time since the fight on the river. He tried not to look at the sores on his body, the deep, blood-encrusted welts where armour rubbed too hard or weapons had not quite penetrated.

  Columbino sang as he washed. Men were laughing, but other men were searching their purses for coins, and the washerwomen had a number of proposals put to them. Some blushed, and some laughed, and one woman upended a bucket of dirty water over a man’s head and then offered to break the bucket on him as well.

  But men were laughing, and so were women.

  Swan found Szilagyi leaning against one of the stone archways, joining the laughter. He looked at Swan and winked. ‘You were the first to bathe?’ he asked.

  Swan wrinkled his nose. ‘I hate to fight dirty,’ he said. He wasn’t sure the joke would carry in Hungarian, but judging from the result, it did.

  His arming coat was almost clean but a little damp, and Swan hung it in the sun over the battlements and continued to move about clad only in a clean shirt, braes and hose while his men armed. He drank water and pissed it away, polished his sword, and watched all the Englishmen and the Dutchmen making arrows with a Hungarian fletcher who seemed surprised at the size of the shafts required. He had several bundles, but as Swan watched, he was splitting wood with a big knife and two boys were whittling rounds – too slowly to make many arrows, but the effort would get them another hundred shafts, and the thick bundles promised a long shot-stour.