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

by Christian Cameron

  He threw up over the side.

  He rolled into his own boat, and shoved Maral Khatun’s boat as hard as he could, sending each of them in opposite directions.

  Forty feet away, Drappierro said, ‘Your accusations are pure foolishness, Pasha. Get a grip on yourself. There is no mighty Christian fleet, and there is no trap.’

  Omar Reis did not sound angry. Merely professional. ‘Why the letter, then, messire?’

  ‘A forgery!’ Drappierro spat. ‘An obvious forgery.’

  Swan went into the water. It was colder than he expected, and he felt the current as soon as he went in. He fought fatigue and revulsion.

  And fear.

  As soon as he put his head under the water, it was dark, and he felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into the man’s skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

  He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back – now kneeling on both knees. He could see nothing. He could hear at least two men dying. Everything smelled of blood, and faeces, and despair.

  He was there for long enough to feel the total panic. He couldn’t get his head under the water. He would not do it.

  Any moment, a Turk would put his head over the stern and see Auntie – or him.

  He tried again.

  Damn it.

  He tried prayer, and nothing came.

  Tried thinking of beautiful women. Of the head of St George.

  Of life.

  He didn’t breathe deeply enough, but in the end he got his head under water, and he got under the boat, and his desperately questing hand found the little keg secured by the rope. Weighted with lead.

  Fuck them all, he thought. I’m going to pull this off.

  He made enough noise to wake the dead, getting back in his boat.

  No one paid him any attention, because Drappierro and Hamza Beg and Omar Reis were shouting like bulls.

  Swan opened the small keg. Inside it was full of tallow, except for the bars of lead that killed its buoyancy, the oiled leather packet of gunpowder, and the small oiled silk packet. Swan took that. He didn’t smile. The fun of the prank was gone with Mustafa’s throat.

  Now it was just a job.

  Inside the powder bag was the length of a man’s hand of slow match, and his tinder box. Swan reassembled his device – the packet of powder inside the tallow, which he packed back, his hands greasy with the stuff. He pulled the waxed plug on the barrel and fed the fuse through it, and then he tapped the top of the keg into place until the thin board snapped past the ends of the staves.

  It took him ten tries to light his char cloth. Auntie was a hundred yards away, coasting on the current.

  He giggled.

  He reached out and grabbed the anchor chain and pulled, so his boat began to float north along the side of the galley. Swan got this oars in the water, set the keg on the stern post and gave three long pulls so he was moving well – he was clumsy, using one hand to balance the barrel every other stroke, and the boat swung back and forth and bumped along the galley’s low sides.

  A sailor – deck crew – looked out over the side, his head silhouetted against the moon.

  Swan ignored him and touched the char cloth to the slow match. The fuse began to burn, a thin wisp of smoke rising in the still air.

  Drappierro shouted, ‘Of course it’s the little bastard. He’s made the whole thing up – forged the letter! Listen, Pasha! He’s a thief and liar!’

  ‘There’s a man in a boat!’ shouted the sailor.

  A hackbut appeared over the side, the torchlight sparkling on its polished barrel.

  Swan had expected to have another minute to let the fuse burn. But his time was up – he could hear the gods telling him he was done.

  Or just God.

  He rose at his oars, plucked up the keg, and threw it with both hands as hard as he could into the air.

  And then, without awaiting the result, he dived into the water.

  And at the bottom of his dive, he swam down, even as he heard the bark of hackbuts above the water.

  The dreams of death – Salim’s death – followed him in the water, but he out-swam them.

  He swam until he could no longer hold his breath, and even then he moved his arms. It was suddenly light all around him.

  All around him.

  He was trying to rise when the fist of a giant slammed into the water above him, and he was forced out – and down. He swallowed water, but he was past his panic.

  He coughed out the last of his air, utterly disoriented. Unable to choose which way led to the surface and air. The light dimmed – but fortuna showed him the glint of a glass bottle on the bottom of the harbour where some reckless sailor had dropped the precious thing – and suddenly his brain worked, and up and down were restored.

  He gave a kick to the surface.

  The Turkish flagship was on fire.

  Swan laughed.

  Swan swam into the town on the exuberance of success, and climbed the central pier unaided and undetected. The whole harbour was lit by the inferno of the galley burning in the middle of the channel, and by the time Swan was standing on the pier, two dozen alert deck crews had cut their cables and were rowing – weakly, because most of their oarsmen were ashore – rowing for safety. A galley is fifty metres of light, dry wood coated in pitch and fused in oiled linen and hemp and tarred rope – a firebomb waiting for a light – and no Turkish captain could afford a spark.

  The Chians, quite naturally, thought it was an attack and sounded the alarm. Every soldier in the town went to the walls, seaside and landside. From the pier, Swan could see the Genoese and Portuguese gunners in the seaward bastions, their matches lit, watching the desperate movements of the Turkish crews. In the Turkish camp off to the north, the janissaries stood to arms and the drums beat.

  A second Turkish galley caught fire.

  The crew, less brave than the crew of the flagship, jumped for the safety of the water. The ship drifted on the current, and more and more galleys cut their cables or dropped their anchor chains.

  Undermanned galleys began to drift within extreme range of the town’s guns. Unordered, the Portuguese master gunner ordered the seaward bastion to open fire.

  Unnoticed, the author of the night’s excitement dragged himself under a fishing boat pulled well above the tideline on the town’s inner beach.

  Despite the roar of the cannon and the flickering light, he was asleep before the third Turkish galley caught.

  In the morning, a professional observer could make out four Turkish galleys burned to the waterline and then turned turtle, their buoyant timbers keeping the wrecks afloat, drifting with the obscene wetness of dead jellyfish. Two more had been captured when they drifted ashore, and another destroyed by gunfire.

  Swan stood on the beach, drinking it all in, and then walked – naked – up into the town. He went to the house of the Latin bishop, and demanded clothing as a member of the order, and was clothed. Swan played the injured hero to perfection, and had the sympathy, first, of the bishop’s valet, and then of his housekeeper, and by the time he’d shared a plate of veal with the prelate, he had the bishop’s complete sympathy as well.

  ‘You are the young man who accused the president of the council of impiety,’ the bishop said, with a certain amusement. ‘I remember you.’

  Swan bowed where he sat. ‘Yes, my lord.’

  The bishop – a Genoese – sat back and played with his cup. ‘The president sees his duty differently than you or I,’ he said.

  A young Greek appeared at the doorway to the room – once a woman’s solar, Swan thought – and when the bishop looked at him, he indicated a small piece of paper or parchment between his fingers.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the bishop said, with a civil inclination of his head. He accepted the message and read it. And smiled.

  ‘The Turkish
fleet is reported to be abandoning their camp – their rowers are going aboard and they are burning all the supplies they moved ashore. Come, Master Swan.’

  Swan followed the bishop – a big man who nonetheless appeared capable of rapid movement and decisive action. The diocesan palace was not a grand affair, but it did sport a fine old tower, and they ran up six flights of steps to the top.

  From the top, they could see the straits full of Turkish shipping, and the far coast of Asia. To the south, at the base of the mountain, the Turkish camp looked like a nest of woodlice kicked by a child, and to the north, they could see the vanguard of the Turkish fleet already forming up. On the beaches south of the town, dozens of Turkish ships were landing stern first and taking aboard their full crews of oarsmen.

  Almost at their feet, in the town’s main square, the president of the Mahona and a dozen Mahonesi were arguing with an armoured man, who was waving a sword like an actor in a St George play.

  ‘Young man, I do believe that God has answered our prayers.’ The bishop nodded and then grinned like a much younger and less dignified man.

  Swan’s joy was tinged with anxiety for the young Lord of Eressos. ‘My particular friend Zambale …’

  The bishop shook his head. ‘Why hold him, when the Turks are leaving? He was only taken up at the behest of that detestable apostate Drappierro.’ He shrugged. ‘There is half the Mahona. Let us go and address them.’

  The bishop paused in his own yard only long enough for servants to drape the correct robe and place the correct mitre on his head – which they did as he walked through them. Swan received a scarlet surcoat – close inspection showed the white cross to have been hastily added to a churchman’s garment, but Swan was transformed from looking like an armed servant to a soldier-prince of the Church.

  The bishop gathered a dozen retainers – men-at-arms and priests – and swept out of his gates into the square.

  In the square, a crowd had gathered. There were twenty fully armoured men on horseback, and the captain of the town continued to argue with the Mahonesi, the face inside his armet red with exertion – and wrath.

  But the appearance of the bishop – brilliant in his Easter robes, with a retinue behind him – silenced the square. The captain, a mercenary, knelt before the bishop and kissed his ring.

  The president of the Mahona fiddled with his black cap nervously.

  Then his eyes flickered over Swan and froze.

  Swan offered him the smile that the lion has for the gazelle.

  ‘In the aftermath of such a brilliant stroke, surely we should be thanking God,’ said the bishop.

  The captain bowed. ‘What we should be doing is attacking their rearguard and stinging the bastards so that they think twice about coming back.’ He looked at the president. ‘What we are doing is – nothing.’

  ‘More violence may only force the Turk into greater efforts!’ the president said. But he was looking at Swan, and sweating.

  Swan didn’t push past the bishop. Life at his father’s episcopal court – and at Hampton and with Bessarion – had taught him a great deal about patience. And revenge.

  Instead of acting prematurely, he watched the bishop. The man was almost a head taller than the president, and looked more like a man-at-arms than some of the men-at-arms. He spread his arms and gave an invocation, and then all the people in the square knelt and said three prayers.

  And then the bishop glanced at Swan.

  Swan stepped forward past the bishop, and placed himself in front of the president.

  ‘You have misplayed your hand, you know,’ Swan said pleasantly. ‘The Turks are beaten and they will run. They know the Allied fleet is on the way.’

  ‘There is no Allied fleet!’ the terrified man hissed.

  Swan, who knew perfectly well that there was no Allied fleet, kept his composure. ‘You can’t imagine that the Turks are running from nothing?’ He smiled. ‘I call on you to release this sortie, to wreak the havoc on the infidel that is your duty – your duty!’ Swan bowed. ‘And please, release my friend the Lord of Eressos immediately.’ Swan leaned over and spoke very quietly. ‘I have your correspondence with Drappierro.’

  Swan had also learned, in gutters and palaces, that sometimes a really big lie is better than any amount of truth.

  The president turned a chalky white.

  He stepped back as if struck – and raised a hand. But he was not utterly without cunning. ‘You will ride with the sortie, sir?' he said, his voice already rich with unction. ‘A man as full of knightly virtue as you!’

  Swan laughed. He had laughed more in the last six hours …

  ‘I will ride with the sortie, unarmoured. I will go unto the battle front like Uriah, but I will not be touched.’ He grinned like a maniac at the president of the Mahona. And held up his left hand, where a brilliantly carved diamond glittered. ‘Because I am invincible,’ he said.

  He bowed to the bishop, and one of the bishop’s servants ran for a horse.

  What he got was a fine black churchman’s horse, a heavy beast that the bishop rode in parades and occasionally to falconry. But Swan didn’t care.

  He vaulted into his saddle, and joined the captain of the town.

  The mercenary was no older than Swan, and wore a fortune in armour. ‘Messire is a Knight of the Order?’ he asked. The bishop’s servants handed Swan gauntlets and a bevoir for his neck and a fine German sallet – none fit well, but all were far better than nothing. And a sword and a dagger.

  ‘I’m merely a volunteer,’ Swan admitted.

  The young captain twirled his moustache. ‘Well, by Saint George, Messire has already won the day with the Mahona, so if Messire would do my little company the honour of carrying the standard of the town, perhaps we will show these worthy Turks that Italians have some skill in arms. Eh?’

  Swan took the lance with the town’s small standard.

  With mounted crossbowmen and every local gentleman who had a horse and arms, they mustered a hundred cavalry for the sortie.

  The Turks were well prepared for such a move, and the captain, for all his youth, was too professional to waste men late in a victory, so the next hour was spent in a series of dashes from cover to cover, quite unlike Swan’s former notions of armoured combat on horseback before he came out to Rhodos. Under the captain’s shouted commands, they would ride at the beach, swerve in behind a hill, and their crossbowmen would snipe at the enemy rearguard from cover, while pages held their horses – and then, when the janissaries prepared a counter attack, the men-at-arms would sweep away.

  It was exactly the sort of warfare that Swan had practised under the turcopilier of Rhodos.

  By the time the sun was high in the sky, Swan, in almost no armour, had sweated through all his clothes, and the fully armoured men’s faces were as red as beets when they raised their visors or removed their armets or sallets.

  There were fewer than a dozen Turkish ships left on the beach when the janissary commander made his lethal error. He had a great deal of beach to cover, and he elected to spread his men in open ranks – only two deep, and four paces between men.

  The captain was eating an apple. He watched for a moment, and turned to Swan. ‘It is like the moment when she kisses you – you know what I mean, messire?’

  Swan laughed. ‘Oh, I do,’ he said.

  When they charged, the Turkish bows plucked men from saddles – or shot horses. But the Turks were too thinly distributed to stop the charge, and clearly had been misled as to their number – and in the time it takes a man to bleed out, the situation went from an organised retreat to a rout, and then the horsemen were in among the galleys, killing sailors, and after that, it was a massacre. The oarsmen were mostly slaves – and as soon as the horseman came down the beach, they screamed like ghazis and ripped at their captors with their bare hands.

  It was too late to be decisive. Eight of the dozen galleys got off the beach, and there was little the horsemen could do to stop them. But four ships were
taken. And when the Turks tried to come in with other ships and take them back, they were greeted by the Italian captain’s little surprise – a pair of guns on wheeled carriages.

  The Turks ran for the open sea, and the garrison cheered from the walls.

  When they returned through the sally port, the Lord of Eressos stood there in half-armour with a borrowed sword.

  ‘Damn you!’ he said. ‘I’ve missed everything!’

  Swan slid from his borrowed horse. ‘I doubt it. I think this war will go on a long, long time.’

  He introduced the captain of the town to his Lesbian friend, and the three of them, when the horses were curried and the weapons cleaned, proceeded to bathe – first in water, and later in adulation.

  Late that night, Swan sat in a waterfront taverna, and gazed at the diamond on his finger.

  ‘Is that the jewel that the whoreson Drappierro wanted?’ The Lord of Eressos spread his hands.

  Swan looked at him. ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked, his head racing. Theodora said …

  ‘People talk.’ Zambale smiled, then shrugged. ‘I suppose one of the guards said something.’

  Swan looked at him in wine-soaked puzzlement. ‘What would they know? Drappierro sent everyone out of the room.’

  And then it hit him. Drappierro had spies everywhere – on Chios and Lesvos. Swan’s eyes locked with Zambale’s.

  He regretted opening his mouth.

  Zambale backed up a step and drew a dagger.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Swan said. He got his back to the wall and reached for his borrowed sword.

  It wasn’t there, of course. It was leaning against the wall of the bishop’s palace.

  ‘You have to know everything, do you not, Englishman?’ Zambale flicked the dagger with easy competence between his hands.

  The Italian captain took a sip of wine.

  ‘In this case,’ Swan said, ‘I can let it go. If you can.’

  Zambale pursed his lips.

  Swan didn’t relax – he was in one of the guards the order taught – but he raised a hand. ‘Zambale – I like you. Let it go. I don’t care. If you reported to Drappierro, or if you didn’t – I don’t care.’

  ‘Always the hero. With Prince Dorino, and now, here.’ Zambale’s face was twisted with rage – or grief. The dagger flicked into his right hand – point down.