Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  The donat made a face. ‘As long as we are alive. This is no fanfaronade, brother; we have a fine garrison because the lady pays well, and we have good armour and modern weapons and cisterns full of water. And food.’ He looked out. ‘Look there. They’re bringing another gun.’

  On the beach, another galley was being warped in. Her bow guns were already in slings on the foremast, ready to be dropped on the beach; very seamanlike.

  Swan watched the whole operation while Francesco recited a part of the ship list from the Iliad. He counted the vessels on the beach and anchored in close, some in the Venetian manner, bow and stern. One galley was on the rocks in the inner harbour, her bows stoved.

  Swan pursed his lips and muttered some curses.

  ‘Daring,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Will you make a sortie tonight?’ Swan asked the armoured lady.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Could we attack the battery where I was almost taken?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘Are you mad? Insane? Over the gully and up a set of terraces?’

  ‘I want to take back my friend, if he is alive,’ Swan said. ‘I’ve been a Turkish prisoner. He won’t have moved far. He’s probably being forced to work on the battery.’

  She shook her head. ‘Too risky. Besides, your friend is probably dead or worse.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Probably. Still.’

  She smiled. ‘Damn. Well, if they captured me, I’d sure as hell hope someone would come for me.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I would like to suggest a fanfaronade, as Francesco so aptly called it.

  Swan went through the sally port in a maille shirt, a very light breastplate and a beautiful pair of Italian finger gauntlets of the last age, releathered by the Orsini armourer just for him, topped by an old and visorless armet. He carried an arming sword and a knife in his belt and the fish knife, still around his neck. On his back was his fish basket. The salt fish had been eaten.

  He was the fifth man out the door; Caterina di Orsini led from the front. They prayed; her men-at-arms reminded each other that she was not to be taken alive, and Swan made the same request.

  Francesco Della Rovere nodded to him. ‘We know,’ he said.

  They scrambled down the goat path from the postern, while two small gonnes played on the Turkish battery, and the battery suddenly fired, five loud slams in a row, and splinters flew off the wall above them and all of them were showered in gravel and shards of stone, and a man went down despite his full armour. Swan took a blow on the head that made it ring and left him unsteady and a little unsure of the way in which the world worked, but he followed Francesco down the steep, terraced slope into what appeared to be Dante’s hell; ring upon ring of darkness, smoke and fire.

  Down they went; down and down, and another tremendous volley of guns fired, now well over their head; the only tangible result a shower of gravel in the darkness, ringing on their helmets.

  They turned left at the bottom, and began to move along the gully. Swan could hear Turks talking above them, and then another explosion. The straps on his basket were cutting into his shoulders, but he kept his head down, tried not to think about what he was carrying, and kept going.

  They went under a bridge, and then they were in a tunnel, and the men not wearing full plate were summoned forward, and they crawled. It was a long way; far enough for Swan to panic at the weight of the earth over his head and then calm himself and crawl forward again. He was in the middle of the crawling file, and the tunnel was at best as tall as a child. Then he could smell the sea, and Francesco was laughing with relief.

  ‘That was the old city,’ Francesco whispered. ‘From the time of the Persian Wars. Miltiades.’ He shrugged. ‘It is as if it is all happening again, yes? The Persians …’ He fell silent, and Swan looked back at the tunnel, which was a gaping mouth in a seaside cliff.

  ‘Their ships are over there,’ Francesco said as another of the Orsini men crawled out of the tunnel. He was dragging his basket, and he joined Swan, and finally there were four of them.

  They clambered over moonlit seaside rocks, volcanic ripples that seemed too organic not to be alive, and then they were on a beach, and the Turkish galleys stretched away into the moonlight like a linear forest of masts and prows. Swan tested the breeze. ‘Upwind,’ he said, and the four men, unchallenged, crawled and then walked along the moonlit beach. The Turks were above them, fifty feet or more, on the flat ground. There were slaves on the beach and a handful of sailors or soldiers to watch them; most of the guards were asleep.

  They woke up when the great galley at the north end of the beach blew up. The explosion was big, because Swan had taken the time to put his basket of black powder in metal casings right alongside the vessel’s small powder magazine.

  The third galley in the line blew a few seconds later. The flaming wreckage fell onto the other ships, both on the beach and, by sheer luck, the ones anchored off the beach, bow and stern.

  Turkish sailors and soldiers poured down the low cliffs and pushed the slaves into the flames, demanding that they put out the fires, using any vessel that would hold water. It wasn’t intentional cruelty but faulty fuse-cutting that caused the last two charges to go off almost ten minutes after the first two, so that the packed mobs of Christian slaves were slaughtered by the splinters.

  So were the Turks.

  Swan saw what he’d done. It was as if a shutter went down over his mind, but too late; he was aware, far away from the instant needs of the moment, that he had crossed a line in horror; that the slaughter of a hundred or so men in the dark was in fact worse than being kept in a hole in the ground.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Francesco. The Bolognese shrugged, as if the incredible slaughter were an everyday event. The two men ran into the darkness, and Francesco led Swan through a tangle of vineyards and across the inevitable gully. Was it the same gully? Swan’s mind was sluggish, and then they were at the base of a very ancient aqueduct. There was nothing left bar a single heavy pylon.

  ‘That looked spectacularly successful,’ Caterina di Orsini said.

  Swan grunted.

  ‘Good. Follow me, then,’ she said, and the whole party, now almost fifty men-at-arms, flowed along the crest of a low ridge and then dropped down out of the hills. Just as the distant east began to show a little brush of light, they fell on the new Turkish battery from behind. The battery was almost empty; the whole Turkish covering force was fighting the fire on their ships.

  Swan opened the stockade of prisoners, and most of them huddled away from him.

  ‘Stefanos!’ he called, and to his immense and illogical joy the man came, bruised, but unbroken.

  ‘Sweet Mother of God,’ Stefanos said. ‘You came for me, Frank?’

  ‘I wanted more fish stew,’ Swan said.

  He kissed Caterina on both cheeks in the Turkish battery, a few minutes before a powder charge blew in three days’ work by all the Christian slaves. The terrace above collapsed, and the resulting mudslide crumbled the battery like paper.

  Swan was gone by then. He’d left the arming sword and the armour in his fish basket, and he was dressed in a dead Turk’s clothes and moving as fast as his lacerated legs would allow over the thorny low hills behind the battery. They went inland until it was getting light; caught a path in the old spruce woods and raced, breathless, east and south.

  Morning found them asleep, high on the slopes of Lepedymnos. They rested for six hours, and then moved, crossing the ridge where no Turk could see them and then descending all day into the sharp hills above Sikamineas. Nightfall and Swan was sleeping under a wool blanket in the old woman’s house, his belly full of good bread and old wine.

  He awoke to find her sitting on his rickety bed, her hand over his mouth.

  ‘You cry,’ she said.

  He found that he was crying. He couldn’t stop. It made no sense.

  He didn’t want to be alone, either, and he couldn’t go back to sleep.

  But the next morn
ing he was happy enough to board the fishing smack. The wind was still in their favour, a remarkable reversal, and they sailed down the coast without sighting the Turkish galley he dreaded. The swell was down, and the storm was breaking up.

  ‘I need to go straight into Mytilene,’ Swan said to Stefanos. ‘I know why you mess around, but every heartbeat counts.’

  The pilot chatted to Stefanos in vernacular Greek. Both men were smiling, but there was a heavy air of tension.

  ‘He says no,’ Stefanos said. ‘These men live and die by their ability to go … anywhere.’

  Swan considered remonstrating. And he considered simply threatening to kill them; he didn’t really think five unarmed men could resist him in an open boat, but fishermen were tough and he’d had enough killing.

  ‘There are thousands of lives at stake,’ he said, but he didn’t really expect an answer. If they had been the kind of men to want to save the world, they’d have volunteered.

  ‘I can get horses at Thermi,’ Stefanos said. ‘Good horses.’

  ‘Then Thermi,’ Swan said, too tired to argue. He wasn’t just physically tired, either.

  Late afternoon; the sky was clearing in the east, and the wave height outside the harbour was barely more than a ripple.

  Cardinal Trevisan sat in a huge chair that might have been Francesco Gatelussi’s throne, when the old pirate made himself Lord of Mytilene in the last century. He was flanked by Fra Tommaso and the Genoese admiral. Corner, the Venetian, was seated on a three-legged chair as if he was an errant schoolboy. The Genoese admiral, Doria, was just laying forth his sailing plan for a descent on Chios.

  Swan was still in his Greek/Turkish clothes. They stopped him at the great six-foot-wide and nail-studded door to the great hall, and Trevisan’s fashion-conscious confessor, Father Etiore, smiled and tugged his moustache. ‘Perhaps Messire could return when smelling a little less like a fishing boat?’ he said. ‘And perhaps wearing hose instead of theatrical costume?’

  Swan bowed. Then he stepped past the priest as easily as a dancer might have, and strode into the hall. His robes flapped, spreading his smell, and the dust of his ride from Thermi rose in the shafts of late afternoon sunlight streaming into the clerestory windows.

  The priest grunted and pursued him down the nave, but Swan’s stride was long. Behind him, the priest called, ‘Ser Suane!’

  Every head turned.

  ‘What is the meaning of this interruption?’ Doria asked. ‘And who are you, sir?’

  Swan kept walking. He passed the Genoese officer and walked until he was directly before the cardinal, to whom he made a deep reverentia.

  ‘Eminence,’ he said. He made another, as if his legs were not made of mud, to the prince. ‘Your Grace.’ He had a scroll rolled in his hand like a captain’s baton. He hoped, a little desperately, that the cardinal was not altogether a fool.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ Trevisan snapped.

  Prince Dorino nodded. ‘I took the liberty of sending Ser Suane to Mithymna,’ he said.

  ‘We cannot save Mithymna,’ Trevisan said pettishly. ‘The fleet thanks you for your bravery, Ser Suane, but it was misplaced, and …’

  ‘We can save Mithymna,’ Swan said.

  Trevisan’s look changed. ‘Do not imagine you can brook my authority?’ he snapped.

  ‘Eminence, I believe it would be to your benefit to hear me out,’ Swan said.

  ‘Remove yourself. You are impertinent,’ Trevisan said.

  Swan held up his scroll, so that the papal seal showed. ‘If you make me use this,’ he said clearly, ‘you will regret it very much.’

  All the conversation in the hall came to an abrupt end.

  ‘Clear the hall,’ Trevisan said to his chamberlain.

  ‘The admirals and Messire Bembo and the prince will stay,’ Swan snapped. He didn’t care. He didn’t care that he was destroying his career. To hell with them all. Just once, he would do the right thing, and do it right. It wouldn’t matter; no one would even remember …

  ‘How dare you?’ Trevisan said. He stood. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

  Swan was almost driven to a kind of insane laughter at the irony, the deep, bitter irony of it. The Pope who had stolen money to build a fleet had appointed a proveditore, a military auditor, to make sure everything was done well. And that commission was in his hand. Because Bessarion had recommended him. And Trevisan had wanted his men-at-arms.

  Swan might have laughed, but the situation was too dire.

  ‘I am Ser Tommaso Suane of the Order of Saint Mark,’ he said. ‘I am your proveditore; appointed by his Holiness, the Pope.’

  Trevisan flinched, as if from a blow.

  ‘The Turkish fleet is crippled; they have landed their guns to lay siege to Mithymna, sure that the Christians do not dare to attack.’ Swan snapped his commission open and pointed it at the cardinal. ‘If you do not attack, I will make sure that the Venetians explain to Europe exactly where the money for these ships came from. And trust me, Eminence. I know to the ducat.’

  Trevisan looked at his confessor. ‘What is he …’ He focused on Swan. ‘How can you know …’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind. I will have you placed in irons. You can explain to the Pope …’

  Prince Dorino shook his head in turn. ‘No, Eminence,’ he said. ‘No, I think I am with the young man. Why should we not attack the Turks?’

  ‘The risk is …’ Trevisan grew very red in the face. ‘No!’ he shouted.

  Alessandro Bembo leaned back and made a clicking noise with his tongue; the noise a Venetian crowd made when disappointed in a performance. Admiral Corner laughed.

  ‘Why not attack?’ Bembo said. He stretched and came to his feet. ‘You spent all the Pope’s money on this fleet, and your whole fleet is rotten with Tenedos worm, isn’t it?’ Bembo shrugged, his Venetian drawl intentionally offensive. ‘I swam under your ships,’ he said. He held out a hand, and Umar put a piece of wood into it, with the little worm still in it.

  ‘This is off your Capitano galley,’ he said. ‘You had your ships built in Ancona, and you didn’t even pay to have the bottoms tarred.’ He shrugged. ‘In three months, the fleet sinks.’

  Corner laughed. ‘Ah, the shipyards of Ancona,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Christ Redeemer!’ spat the Genoese. ‘Is this true?’

  ‘I invite messire to go for a swim under the papal galleys,’ Bembo said.

  ‘So in three months, they sink,’ Swan said. ‘And there is an inquiry throughout Christendom.’ He took the plunge. ‘Or we fight a battle in the morning, at good odds, and if we triumph, no one will ever ask that question, Eminence. Least of all your proveditore.’

  ‘You will never work in Rome again,’ Trevisan said. ‘I will be sure that you never receive the slightest …’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Fuck you, Eminence. Here’s a thought from the graceful young men who do all your work, all your killing, all your thinking. This word isn’t just for you, but for all your kind. Fuck you, you useless sybarite. Here’s my word. Fight the Turks and win. And consider, when you threaten me, which of us can push a knife home in a throat without a fucking qualm.’

  No one moved to help the cardinal. He stood, shaking with rage.

  Bembo was shaking with laughter.

  An hour later, in Swan’s room above the great hall, he drank wine with Bembo.

  ‘I hope Venice means to honour its commitments to me,’ Swan said. He felt much better.

  Bembo shrugged. ‘Oh, that was priceless. Things I always wanted to say, even to Bessarion.’ He shook his head. ‘Of course, you’re a dead man.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Omar Reis wants me dead. The Sultan wants me dead. I’m not sure that Cardinal Trevisan is even worthy of my notice.’

  Bembo reached out and embraced him. ‘Tomorrow, perhaps we will win a signal victory,’ he said. ‘And in Venice, everyone will know who the architect was.’

  Swan bowed drunkenly. ‘When do we go aboard
?’ he asked.

  Bembo pushed his friend back into a chair. ‘I will go now. You come when the moon is full.’

  And then Clemente came. ‘You went to Mithymna without me,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Sorry,’ Swan said. ‘I had to.’

  Clemente was sullen, fetching water and then soap. ‘You make me think I am someone,’ he said finally. ‘I want to be someone. Not just a servant, even though …’ He looked away. ‘It’s a good life, being your servant. But I want to be …’ He shrugged. Swan recognised that it was his own shrug, and he smiled.

  ‘Clemente, the next time someone needs to get smuggled into a fortress ringed by Turks, you can go,’ he said.

  Clemente smiled. ‘Bless you,’ he said. ‘When Kendal’s a gentleman, I want to be your archer.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I agree,’ he said.

  Clemente whooped. ‘You won’t regret it, Illustrio,’ he said. ‘Par dieu. Grazie mille, capitano.’

  Swan smiled, washing away the blood. He was covered in bruises that made no sense; inside his bicep, both elbows, a big, angry welt over his ribs. Clemente stepped out, and Swan changed towels. There was blood coming out of the welt on his ribs.

  He heard Clemente step back in, and Swan was exploring the welt which now appeared to be a very shallow penetration. He’d almost died. The blow had gone through the maille; when had that been?

  There had been some fighting by the galleys …

  A cool hand touched his back, and he realised that he’d been a fool and that his unguarded back was to the door …

  The ‘assassin’ laughed.

  ‘And again you smell of fish, Messire Swan,’ Donna Theodora said.

  Swan turned to find the Byzantine princess standing by the wooden washtub.

  ‘At least this time I’m doing something about it,’ he said. He realised that, all things being balanced, he wanted her desperately; as a refuge; as a place of peace. Not because of her body, but because she was a peer; she knew …

  ‘You look as if you lost a terrible fight,’ she said. She was fully clothed and he was naked. ‘Those are some remarkable bruises.’

  He nodded. ‘Anyone who fights wears these,’ he said. ‘In a way, they are signs you are alive; blows that didn’t kill you.’