Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six: Chios

by Christian Cameron

  Zambale nodded. ‘That much is true.’ He shrugged.

  ‘They seem confident,’ said one magistrate.

  ‘What do you know of the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ asked the other.

  Swan managed a smile. ‘A great deal. But you can see them from your walls.’

  ‘Tell him!’ said the first magistrate.

  ‘They are ignorant boys!’ spat the other.

  The two men glared at each other.

  Swan lay back on the straw as if uninterested. It was one of the finest acts of his life. But his brain was working at fever pitch. It occurred to him that he needed to know how they already knew where the order’s galleys were.

  Apparently Zambale’s brain was also working feverishly. ‘Have the Turks sent their terms?’ he asked.

  The older magistrate nodded. ‘Yes, young man.’

  ‘They are not what we were promised,’ said the other, somewhat ingenuously.

  The older man glared at his compatriot.

  Swan regarded them from his straw and wondered whether he was infested with fleas and lice yet. He already itched. He stank of fear and fish and sweat.

  The two men asked a few more questions. Neither Zambale nor Swan offered any information about the location of the Christian fleet. Eventually, the two men left.

  ‘They’re fishing,’ Zambale said.

  ‘They’re desperate,’ Swan said. ‘Last night they weren’t desperate. How bad are the Turkish terms?’

  ‘What is it about the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ Zambale asked. ‘Perhaps the Turks have heavy gonnes?’

  Swan lay back and tried to think.

  Time passed. They were brought good bread and strong, if young, wine, and some fish. They ate it all.

  Swan was growing to like Zambale a good deal. In prison, the younger man didn’t posture and his desire to prove Swan his inferior had vanished, to be replaced by an easy raillery and a certain amount of teamwork.

  Zambale shrugged after dinner. ‘I’ll get out,’ he said. ‘I’m rich, and I have things these pigs want. I’ll have you out of here like a pretty girl gets out of a convent.’

  Swan nodded. ‘If the order arranges a release for me, I’ll get you out, as well,’ he said.

  Like boys on an outing, they swore.

  Later, a pair of heavily armoured soldiers came. They had short spears, Milanese breast and back plates and full arm armour and helmets.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Swan muttered.

  A third man – the man who delivered food – opened the door. In Greek, he said, ‘Only the man calling himself the Lord of Eressos, please. Or they will be very rough.’

  Zambale rose. He looked at Swan and shrugged. ‘If you find they killed me, get my cousins to bury me.’

  Swan bowed. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he said.

  Zambale clasped his hand. He didn’t say any more. He looked at the two soldiers with a contempt that Swan wished he could emulate, and was marched away.

  Almost a quarter of an hour elapsed before a tall African in impeccable Italian clothes slipped into the antechamber of the cell, outside the bars.

  Swan’s whole body clenched.

  The man bowed, in the Moslem way. ‘Master Suani?’ he asked.

  One of Auntie’s Africans. She had four or five – he could remember them. Not the steward – Swan had seen him killed. But the other man had been present – he racked his brain. Swan didn’t know the man’s name, but he thought that he knew his face.

  ‘You have the advantage of me,’ Swan said in Arabic.

  ‘My mistress is even now bargaining for your life with her brother,’ the tall African said. He grinned. ‘I left Master Drappierro questioning your accomplice. Do you know that the gentlemen who hold this town have sold you—’

  Another voice cut across the African’s. ‘Not so fast, Mustafa.’ Messire Drappierro appeared out of the gloom, flanked by another pair of guards.

  Swan’s brain raced along a dozen channels at once.

  Drappierro turned. ‘Everyone out. You too, Mustafa.’ He gave orders in his usual tone of absolute power. The soldiers walked off without a murmur. Mustafa raised an eyebrow and then bowed towards Swan.

  ‘I promise you, you will prefer my mistress to anything this man offers,’ he said.

  When Mustafa was gone, Drappierro came and sat by the bars of Swan’s cell. ‘Where is the ring?’ he asked abruptly.

  Swan was ready. From the moment he saw Drappierro, he had decided that it was all about the ring – that Drappierro’s lust for antiquities was such that it was the lever that could move him. The question reinforced his guess.

  ‘I have it,’ Swan said.

  Drappierro leapt to his feet. ‘Give it to me!’ he said.

  Swan laughed. It sounded a little forced, to him – not his best bluff. He was, in truth, completely terrified.

  ‘You don’t think I’d have it here?’ he said.

  Drappierro glared at him. ‘God knows you have had plenty of opportunity to get it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to bring it to me.’

  Swan sat down. ‘It is in Mytilini,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’ Drappierro asked. ‘I have people there – I’ll have it fetched.’

  ‘And you’ll sell me to Auntie,’ Swan replied.

  Drappierro leaned closer. ‘My dear boy,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to sell you to Auntie – although I doubt anyone’s ever called her that in the course of her illustrious life. Do you know why she is here? It is curiously apropos. Hamza Beg is the commander of this fleet – but the command should have been Omar Reis’s. He sails in the second rank – but his sister is here for the Sultan. She is Mehmed’s eye. Hamza Beg has failed at Rhodos and failed at Kos and now, if he hesitates here, Master Swan, she will be rid of him and her brother will be the most powerful soldier in the empire. Those are Turkish politics. Omar Reis is my friend. Not yours, I think. You may trust him to kill you in a most imaginative way if he catches you. Imagine your death throes while you chew on your severed penis. One of a hundred hideous humiliations that the fertile mind of the Moslem has concocted.’ Drappierro allowed himself the flicker of a smile.

  ‘I’m pretty sure they do the same in Florence,’ Swan said, just to swallow his terror. ‘And the Allied fleet will come—’

  Drappierro sat up angrily. ‘What a foolish lie,’ he said. ‘The Genoese Grand Fleet is long gone. You know how I know? I ordered them myself.’ He looked at Swan and shook his head, as if disappointed. ‘Listen, Master Swan. You are a promising young man. You seem to have real taste and you seem to have a ready wit. I need you – in fact, I need a dozen like you. I intend to run most of the Mediterranean over the next decade.’ His smile flickered again. ‘This is a very difficult game, and I don’t expect you know a third of it. So please, leave the thinking to me.’

  ‘Planning to overthrow the Grand Turk?’ Swan asked.

  Drappierro smiled gently. ‘No, my dear. Much the opposite. Don’t you think that Christianity – inasmuch as there ever was an organised Christianity – is done? The Turks are the new power, and they will rein supreme. The fall of Constantinople signals the new era.’ He spread his hands. ‘You think me a traitor? The traitors are those who want to provoke a bloodbath that we cannot win. Or take another view – the traitors are the kings of England, Scotland, France, Castile and the Emperor, who will not leave their squabbles to make a real effort to defeat the Turk. Even if they did, I expect they’d fail. But they won’t even try. The West is done.’ He smiled again. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Swan thought that he had a point. But he also thought that he sounded like an insufferable prick busy convincing himself.

  Swan – ever a man for the main chance – was puzzled to find that he couldn’t stomach this, of all treasons. What an odd cause to choose for dying, he thought.

  He cringed at the image of a tortured death.

  ‘I have the ring,’ he said.

  Drappierro shocked him. ‘Then I’
ll send you for it, of course,’ the Genoese ambassador said. ‘And that surprises you. Really, my boy, you must school your face better than that.’ Drappierro stood up. ‘Be back in four days, or I’ll kill Zambale. If you aren’t back in a week I’ll send word to have your so-called wife murdered. It won’t be pretty, even if she is a whore who opens and shuts to order – understand me, Master Swan? You have palpable hostages to fortune and I can strike at them all. Even your friends in Rome. Messire Di Brachio is recovering – did you know that? Are you two lovers?’

  Swan was shaking.

  Drappierro lowered his voice. ‘Really, Master Swan. Do not be a fool. If you return with the ring, I can arrange your escape. From Auntie and from Omar Reis. Neither cares so very much, eh? Bring me the ring, and I will be your friend. Need I say more?’

  Swan took a steadying breath and wished he were Zambale. ‘I need more than four days,’ he said. ‘The knights won’t let me go so easily.’

  ‘Oh, but they will. I thought you were so intelligent,’ Drappierro said lazily. ‘And by the way, you have just betrayed that the other boy’s life matters to you.’ He made a head motion, barely distinguishable. ‘Very well. Seven days. And then I send for both of them to die.’

  Swan couldn’t help himself. ‘I could leave Zambale to die and beat your messenger to my wife,’ he said.

  Drappierro nodded. ‘You could,’ he said. He smiled with a smugness that was impossible not to hate. ‘But you won’t.’

  Utterly in charge of the situation and everything around him, Messire Drappierro rose, and gave Swan a civil bow. ‘I’ll see you in a week, then,’ he said. He walked out through the open oak doors. He looked back and paused. ‘I own … a great deal of Mytilini. And most of the people in it. Don’t imagine you can deceive me. I’ll be watching through other eyes. Eyes that, if you stand with me, you can help me to command.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t want you to make a mistake and try to resist because you hate me, Master Swan. That wastes my time and your life.’ He nodded. ‘Get the ring. Nothing else matters.’

  Swan let out a breath and realised he’d been holding it a long time. Drappiero’s footsteps rang on the stone, and then the man was gone.

  Swan didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone so much in his entire life.

  Moments later, armoured men came and unlocked his cell. ‘You are free to go,’ one said in Burgundian French.

  Swan received his sword and his purse – empty – and was escorted to the port, where the same fishing boat was waiting, surrounded by soldiers.

  They sailed out unmolested, in a way that suggested that every Turkish ship knew exactly who they were.

  Giorgios, the fisherman, spat angrily over the side. ‘Maybe death would have been better,’ he said. ‘I have smuggled on these coasts for twenty years, and now every man in Chios and all the Turks have me marked.’

  Swan was trying to feel free and breathe easily, but he watched every glance from the fishermen and wondered which one of them was in Drappierro’s pay.

  It took them less than a day to sail back to Kalloni, and Swan lost precious hours dickering with a Kalloni bureaucrat for the loan of a horse. He signed a document he didn’t read, in the name of the Sovereign Order, used the Lord of Eressos’s name as often as he dared, and finally rode a small horse – but a good one – up over the ridges towards Mytilini. He alternated canters and walks, and every hour he walked beside the horse.

  He lost the road with Mount Olympos visible against the moon and stars, and wound up in a deep valley with a Roman aqueduct. He spent half the night sorting out this error and reached the road by a farm track just after dawn. He was exhausted and angry, and he crested the great ridge above Mytilini only to find two bearded men with halberds blocking his way.

  ‘All your money, and the horse and the boots, my lord,’ said the nearer man. He grinned.

  His brother – the resemblance was plain – grinned too.

  A twitch in the gloom, and Swan saw a third man with a heavy crossbow, fully spanned.

  Swan had no idea how well trained his horse was, but he knew they’d kill him either way.

  He leaned forward, put his right spur firmly against his horse’s right side, and got his right hand on his sword hilt – and drew. The sword went straight forward as the horse turned, and his cut took the older brother’s eyes and cut through the bridge of his nose.

  The man screamed and fell forward, and Swan wasn’t there as the crossbow bolt ripped through the air. The horse turned with its back feet, pivoting on its forefeet, and Swan was almost under the saddle he was bent so low. As the second man came in reach, Swan began to rise in the stirrups, and he cut at the pole arm’s haft – three strong cuts, one, two, three – to keep the man off him, and then his horse was galloping down the road, throwing sparks in the early morning gloom.

  Swan looked back once, to see the two surviving bandits crouched over the blinded man.

  He stopped to clean his sword and found the blade bent from his heavy hacking at the pole arm haft – worse, there was a deep chip in the blade where he’d cut into the iron on the haft.

  He cursed. He had loved that sword. Showy as it was, he’d bought it with Violetta.

  He rode into Mytilini after Latin matins, and found the knights of the order in church. He knelt and prayed, and followed Fra Tommaso out into the sunlight.

  ‘You smell a treat,’ Tommaso said. He embraced the younger man. ‘You survived.’

  Swan looked away. When he looked back, all of his choices were made, and his plans laid. ‘Very well. Sirs, I am a spy for Bessarion. I will tell you everything. The men of Chios are in the process of selling the town to the Turks. I was sent —’ He paused and looked at Fra Domenico. ‘I was sent to get your ring, which the traitor Drappierro wants. If I do not get it – he kills Zambale and …’ Swan looked at the two knights. ‘And my wife. So he claims. As far as I can see, he’s running both sides of the negotiations at Chios, and the Turks dance to his tune.’ He shrugged. ‘He wants me to abandon Bessarion and work for him.’

  Domenico smiled at Tommaso, who frowned. Domenico stripped the ring off his finger and put it in Swan’s hand. ‘Take it, then. Go buy the young lord’s freedom. He is, as I understand it, a volunteer of my order.’ The man that all Christians called ‘Fra Diablo’ gave a laugh that would have chilled a murderer. ‘Listen, Master Swan – never let a material object own you. I won it at cards. Take it.’ He smiled. ‘And think – when you have a chance – of the difference between men like us and Drappierro.’

  Swan all but fell on his face. ‘You mean it?’ he asked.

  Domenico laughed. ‘Now – can you fight? Your return will fill a very useful place.’ He gave the Englishman a hard smile. ‘I will choose to trust you. If you fail us – God’s curse on you.’

  Sunset.

  Swan was beyond exhaustion – a little light headed, his hands shaking. He wore the red coat with a white cross of a full knight of the order, and he stood on the command deck of the Katherine Sturmy, which towered over the other ships pulling off the beach as a castle towers over a host of infantry.

  He’d had a busy day. Out into the town, meeting the silversmith and the wine seller, up to the palace to find a sword, three meetings with the captains to plan Fra Domenico’s mad attack …

  And no visit with Theodora. He’d smelled her perfume while he chatted with Prince Dorino.

  In the end, Dorino had offered all the help he could have dreamt of, including the fine German long sword that hung heavily at his side.

  The prince had smiled. ‘It’s not what you came for,’ he said. ‘But unlike my fair cousin, it may save your life.’

  Swan smiled as he thought of Prince Dorino.

  All five galleys were forming inside the breakwater, and there was nothing that the Turks could do without risking the fire of the great castle. But they were forming halfway across the strait, a dozen black hulls in the failing light.

  Richard Sturmy was also wearing the h
abit of the order, and he had good armour – half-armour – which shone as red as his coat in the red sunset.

  ‘I feel like a great man,’ the Englishman admitted. ‘Always wanted to be a knight. Whew! Look at me. Katherine – I wish she could see me!’

  Goodwife Sturmy and her daughter were safe in the castle. The great merchant ship with her high sides and bluff bows for fighting the northern Atlantic had unloaded most of her remaining cargo of lead and all her new alum and was now mounting a pair of Prince Dorino’s cannon, and her waist was full of his mercenaries. The fighting tower forward was fully mounted, and from it floated the banner of the order.

  A dozen knights appeared to grace her decks.

  Indeed, every one of the galleys appeared to be full of knights, their red and white glowing in the red sun. One of the tallest knights was Peter the Dutchman, bow laid aside on the deck and wearing German half-armour from the Mytilini armoury. Few men so looked the part, and he rested on a poleaxe as tall as he was as if to the manor born.

  ‘You take a great risk,’ Swan said.

  Sturmy shrugged, and Master Shipman grunted an order to an English sailor at the helm, and the man steered small and watched for the opening in the breakwater – orders were shouted from the forecastle, because with fighting castles mounted, it was very difficult for the helmsman to see forward, even leaning well out.

  Sturmy watched it all and grinned. ‘If this works, I’ll be away in the morning and scot free all the way to Venice. It this fails …’ He shrugged. ‘By Saint George, Master Swan, I don’t think there’s a ship in these waters that can do my Katherine a hurt. Perhap with cannon – infernal engines. But only if they take me by surprise or there’s no wind.’

  ‘Flagship says to proceed to sea,’ called Shipman’s son Nicholas. ‘Red flag,’ he allowed, as if his father might doubt him.

  ‘Very well,’ Shipman allowed. He nodded. ‘Let go, forward there.’

  The mainsail was let go and sheeted home very quickly, and the tub-like Katherine Sturmy began to gather way very slowly. Behind her vast bulk, five galleys crawled into a neat formation and then rested their oarsmen.