Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five: Rhodes

by Christian Cameron

  But he was not accomplishing his mission.

  And he desperately wanted a girl. He tried his flirting skills on the Greek serving girls in the town – even on servants walking home from the dormitories.

  Since Aphrodite had so effectively deserted him, he tried to find ways of passing the time that wasn’t spent in drilling, swordsmanship, spear fighting and wrestling. The library never failed to interest him, and the brother knights were always delighted if he took a turn in the hospital. The acting head of the English Langue – the order was organised by language – was Sir John Kendal, who was somewhat aloof, but seemed to put a mental check mark against Swan each time he washed sick men.

  It was because of the hospital that he discovered his favourite part of the island.

  Just before spring arrived, two men were brought in, both with multiple abrasions and broken bones. Swan was on duty in the ward and spoke Greek better than any of the other knights, and was summoned.

  The two young Greeks were obviously terrified of the knights and of Swan. They lay in simple white wool gowns on clean linen sheets and were completely silent.

  Swan sat down between them and waived Sir John away. Then, when they were alone, he spoke in good colloquial Greek. ‘How did this happen?’ he asked.

  They looked at each other.

  Swan looked over the younger man’s injuries – broken arm, broken leg, sand in every abrasion. ‘Did a house fall on you?’ he asked.

  They looked at each other. He thought the other man reacted. Something in his eyes.

  The slave who’d brought them in said, ‘Effendi, they were under the town.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Under?’ he asked. ‘Go ahead – speak freely.’

  ‘Very well, Effendi. These unbelieving sons of whores were looting the ancient things under the town.’ The slave – a black African – shrugged, as if everyone knew this.

  ‘That’s a lie!’ sputtered the older Greek man. ‘I was trying to fix my privy.’

  Swan leaned over and took a whiff. And shook his head. ‘Not unless the privy was very new indeed,’ he said.

  The younger man’s pupils widened. ‘Please, my lord! We are poor men.’

  Swan turned back to the slave. ‘Did they have a bag?’ he asked.

  The slave smiled slowly, as if agreeing that Swan was not altogether a fool. ‘They did,’ he allowed.

  ‘What was in it, young man?’ Swan asked. He smiled a little using the term ‘young’. But as a member of the order, he was entitled to a little arrogance, he felt.

  ‘Either it was empty, in which case we will never get it back from the gate guards, or it was full of loot, in which case,’ the African smiled, ‘we will never get it back from the gate guards.’

  ‘Men after my own heart,’ Swan muttered. He was speaking Arabic to the slave, he discovered. ‘Can you take me to where they were found?’

  ‘The effendi must have noted that I am a slave,’ the black man said with a shrug. ‘I will await your pleasure.’ The man managed to say that in a way that suggested that the waiting gave him no pleasure and neither did service to a foreign infidel.

  When Swan was done on the wards, he had the slave fetched.

  ‘I have waited for you for three hours,’ the slave complained.

  ‘During which, you were fed and did no work at all by my command,’ Swan said.

  The two men looked at each other for a moment.

  ‘You have been a slave?’ the black asked carefully.

  ‘Only for a little while,’ Swan said.

  ‘Clearly the effendi learned some essential matters,’ the African said. ‘I am called Salim, here. Out there,’ he said, waving, ‘I am Mohamed.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Call me Tommaso,’ he said. ‘Now show me where they were found.’

  ‘I can do better, if you pay me,’ the African said. ‘I can show you what the two fools didn’t know – how to reach the ancient city under the sewers.’

  ‘Are you a prisoner of war?’ Swan asked.

  Salim nodded.

  Together, they climbed an old house – really a tower, and probably more than a thousand years old. The inside was occupied by beggars who lived in the basement, and all the floors had fallen in and been salvaged for furniture, for room dividers, and even as firewood.

  ‘Can’t we go in by the door?’ Swan asked while climbing the sun-heated stone of the outer wall.

  ‘No,’ said the slave. He offered no further information.

  Swan wondered whether he was being precipitate in trusting the man, and touched the needle-sharp rondel dagger at his waist. Just in case. They got over the old roof trees and then descended on ropes obviously there for the purpose.

  There were other people living in the ruin, and the whole of the old tower was a chimney, so that they climbed down through a variety of cooking smells – onions, some meat, cardamom – all delicious.

  Salim seemed to know the occupants, and he and Swan passed among them with only some murmurs. They went down into the old tower’s basement, and then along a short stone-lined corridor that stank of urine, and into an obvious cesspit.

  ‘Jesus!’ Swan spat.

  Salim made a face. ‘Must you swear, Christian?’ he asked.

  Swan would have laughed, but the stench made him retch.

  The slave raised the hem of his kaftan and Swan pulled his gown tight against his body, and the two men edged along the least polluted wall and into another stinking corridor on the far side.

  ‘Did I fail to mention that the entry route is used as a set of privies?’ Salim asked with a wicked smile.

  Swan grunted. ‘Did I fail to mention that I have a dagger and you do not?’ he asked idly, in Arabic. ‘Even a scratch would be septic, in this.’

  ‘Uhhnn.’ Salim nodded, not displeased.

  While Swan contemplated the Arabic sense of humour, they passed six cesspits, each more odiferous and disgusting than the last, until they emerged into a dark chamber that stank only of cat piss. Swan lit an oil lamp, which guttered, as if the fumes ate the air. But the slave knew where there were lanterns and torches hidden in the rocks, and they made their way along an odd path – almost like a street, except that Swan could tell he was looking at shorings and foundations – heavy stone with an outward slope.

  He stepped on something that bit at his foot. Examination under torchlight revealed a bronze arrowhead – light, and with a trilobite head. Swan had seen them before – at Marathon.

  ‘Persian!’ he said.

  The black man shrugged. ‘If you say, Effendi. You are not expecting treasure, I hope.’

  Swan smiled. ‘If there was a treasure …’ he said.

  Salim raised a black eyebrow. ‘Yes?’ he asked, pausing. The torchlight rendered his face demonic.

  ‘You wouldn’t take me here at all,’ Swan said.

  Salim laughed. ‘Sometimes there are coins. Arrowheads, such as the one you found. It was a great battle, the one the ancient men fought here before the Prophet, may his name be blessed, came to teach men the way of justice.’

  ‘How much farther does this go?’ Swan asked.

  ‘All the way to the—’ Salim seemed to catch himself. ‘Not much farther. Sometimes we find different tunnels—old streets. The old slaves say there is a tunnel cut in the rock—all the way under the walls to the south.’ He shrugged. ‘I have never seen it,’ he said.

  Swan was increasingly conscious of being under the earth with a man as big as he was and every bit as dangerous. At the same time, he recognized the stone in the torchlight as marble—heavily veined grey marble. From ancient Greece.

  ‘It is fascinating,’ Swan said. ‘But I have to be at dinner in the hall. Shall we go back?’

  ‘Yes,’ Salim said, with some relief. He led the way, apparently unconscious of Swan’s careful movements behind him.

  Spring came early in Greece. The flowers burst forth, so that the fields outside the town were like intricate Persian carpets, with tiny flowers each a diffe
rent colour as far as the eye could see.

  The first ship in from Italy brought news of a great peace. There was immense excitement in Rome, and Nicholas V, the Pope, was convening a great council to declare a crusade to rescue Constantinople.

  Swan heard all this over a cup of wine. He walked quickly back to his barracks and found Fra Tommaso – only to have his bubble of militant Christian enthusiasm burst by the old man’s cynicism.

  ‘Peace between Sforza and Venice – certainly. I’d heard of it before we cleared Ancona,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Peace in Italy? I suppose it’s possible.’ He laughed. ‘A crusade? Honestly, young man, where do you get these notions? No one in Europe actually cares about the loss of Constantinople! The Italians want to make money, the French want to make war, the English … perhaps want to make beer. The Emperor, may his name be praised, is busy trying to make certain there won’t be a crusade, and trust me, that will be his view right up until Mehmet marches to the gates of Vienna.’

  Swan sagged. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Listen, boy, you’ve been listening to all the Burgundians and the Frenchmen. They’re eager for a crusade. Good for them – it’s not their cargoes that the Turks will seize. But without a fleet – a fleet of both Venice and Genoa – there is no crusade. Eh?’

  ‘So now what happens?’ Swan asked. ‘We’re ready for sea.’ He thought of the awesome labyrinth under his feet, barely explored.

  ‘As to that – what happens now is that you and I take our ship down to Alexandria, to pay our loving respects to the Mamelukes, who are every bit as much Muslims as the Turks but are preferred by his Holiness. Understand?’ He laughed again.

  ‘No,’ Swan said.

  ‘Good. We’ll sail in the morning. Get your kit aboard.’ Fra Tommaso waved his hand.

  Alexandria was everything that Swan thought a city should be. It was huge – unbelievably big, really, with so many different markets and bazaars that the Englishman wandered from morning until night while the order’s delegation met the Sultan and paid their respects – and some kind of secret tribute.

  After a day as a Christian tourist, Swan decided to see the city as a co-religionist. He had the clothes – all his Turkish clothes had been with Peter, and he liked the idea of going as a Turk, which would prompt fewer questions about any accent there might be to his Arabic. He went ashore in his military gown and changed in the public privy behind the beachfront bazaar. He rolled his Christian clothes into a tight bundle and placed them in the bottom of the small leather bag he carried. Dressed as a Christian, every move he made would be reported.

  Especially a visit to a brothel.

  Dressed as a Turk, he wandered through the waterfront souk, waiting to be challenged. But no such thing took place. Instead, he received a great deal of fawning, and he developed a following of a crowd of small boys, whom he pleased by buying them sweets.

  A woman took the sweets away from one boy and threw them in a pile of dung.

  ‘You know what the Turk wants you for,’ she spat in Arabic that he wasn’t supposed to understand.

  The boys all fled.

  Swan shook his head and continued through the string of markets.

  Alexandria was a dream city – a city almost two thousand years old, and built for trade. The magnificent harbour was packed with Genoese and Venetian shipping, as well as a scattering of French ships and – of all things – an English ship, the Katherine Sturmy. He almost forgot his position as a Turk when he heard a man speak in English – and heard a woman answer him.

  Swan walked away hurriedly lest he betray himself. After two turnings and crossing a broad thoroughfare, he was in yet another set of wandering alleys, no wider than his arm. Here the shops were mere awnings. And here were scraps of antiquities – a head of Aphrodite in marble, a seal carved in quartz, another in bloodstone. Swan eyed them all, collected a few and began to dicker with the owner.

  He saw the man signal someone behind him, but made the mistake of assuming it was the signal to another seller.

  He made a further error in taking his purse out of his leather bag – and disclosing the sum of ten gold ducats. But Swan was canny enough to see the change come over the dealer’s face, like tidal water covering the sands. He flinched and turned – and saw the stick.

  He ducked, and took the blow high on his left arm, and let out a startled squeal of pure pain.

  He got his right hand on his dagger, and in so doing lost his purse. The silk bag landed and opened, and a gold ducat rolled out.

  There were six of them, at least.

  A club struck his shoulder. The left arm was numb, but the man lingered too long and Swan kicked him in the groin with the whole weight of his foot.

  His life was saved by the second man’s greed. Instead of killing him, the man had knelt to pick up the coin. A third man, tall and black, swung a pole or a spear at his head and Swan tried to back up a step and fell over the kneeling man. On instinct, he rammed his dagger into another footpad’s shin. The man screamed. Swan got a hand on his belt and the same motion that pulled Swan to his feet helped him put the other man on the ground.

  He took a blow on his back that hurt like fire, and riposted with a sweeping dagger blow that dropped the tall African, at least temporarily. The others backed away and Swan, his left arm tingling, picked up one of the abandoned clubs. He menaced the pedlar with his dagger and swept the seal stones into his leather bag – the purse would have to stay on the ground.

  His eyes went left, then right. He pivoted, and looked over his shoulder.

  The pedlar rolled the table over on him. He leaped back, and the man shrieked, ‘A Turk! A Turk! A Turk has raped my son!’

  When a somewhat bedraggled Swan went back aboard his galley – he’d run through half of Alexandria, and taken several hard blows – he cleaned up and found himself summoned to the stern cabin to translate for his captain.

  Fra Tommaso met him on the main deck. The rowers – all professionals – were ashore, behaving like oarsmen, and Swan, whose ribs ached, wished he had chosen to join them.

  ‘You have two remarkable black eyes,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘You speak English, I gather.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Swan could barely think. He’d survived the encounter by not using his weapon again and by running – apparently the right tactic when set upon by six men and an angry mob. His stolen gemstones were safe below, but he’d lost the dagger and all the trinkets he’d purchased earlier in the day as well as the ten ducats he’d carried.

  He’d learned that Egyptians hated Turks. Probably more than they hated Christians.

  ‘The English ship is making trouble,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘I want you to explain to them.’

  As it proved, the English ship was making trouble merely by existing, and the Genoese wanted to storm it and kill the entire crew. A very voluble Genoese officer, who was never introduced, stormed and raged at the English merchant, Messire Richard Sturmy. Sturmy stood silently with his hands behind his back like an errant schoolboy. Swan liked him immediately.

  The Genoese didn’t offer a point of view or a legal quibble. He merely made threats – threat after threat, so fast Swan could scarcely keep up.

  ‘Tell this sodomite that if his wife and child are aboard, I’ll rape them and sell them to the Turks. Tell him—’ The Genoese found it hard to speak with Fra Tommaso’s hand over his mouth.

  ‘That is one threat you will not make on my ship, messire,’ Fra Tommaso said quietly.

  Swan had waited patiently through a long and vicious harangue. Now he turned to Messire Sturmy.

  ‘I am English,’ he said. ‘I am a Donat of the order. Thomas Swan.’ He offered his hand.

  Sturmy seized it the way a drowning man might seize a log. ‘Blessing to God and Saint George, my friend! An Englishman! Here!’ He embraced Swan. ‘These … foreigners – I can’t understand ’em. My shipman can, but he says we’re forbidden to trade here – which is cant! I have a letter from the King! And another letter from the S
ultan!’ He grinned at Swan and seemed to take him in for the first time. ‘By the gentle saviour, lad, someone used you as a pell!’

  Swan read the letters quickly. He turned to his knight. ‘Sir – the Englishman has a letter signed by the King of England appointing him an ambassador. And the King of England has the agreement of the Signory and of the Republic to allow this ship to trade on the Levant.’ He handed the letter to Fra Tommaso. ‘And, sir, he has a letter from the Sultan. The Mameluke Sultan Al Ashraf.’

  Fra Tommaso raised an eyebrow. He turned to the Genoese. ‘He has letters – even from your republic.’

  ‘Any whore can get such a letter. Tell him to leave or I kill him and his ship.’ The Genoese leered.

  ‘You are not the best advertisement for your republic – you know that, eh?’ Fra Tommaso said.

  ‘I do not ask for your opinion, Fra Tommaso!’ the Genoese said. ‘Genoa does not support the knights so that they may banter about the news. Rid us of these interlopers!’

  Bits of the merchant’s spittle flecked Swan’s doublet.

  Swan rarely thought of himself as an Englishman. He thought of himself … as himself. As friends with a handful of men and women to whom he was loyal. As one of Bessarion’s men.

  But the Genoese made him feel like an Englishman, and he was tempted to do the Genoese a harm.

  He read over the letters. ‘Messire Sturmy, this man is determined to be rid of you, and he commands the Genoese shipping here – or has the power to make his commands felt. Would you consider trading up the coast of Syria? Perhaps with the Turks?’

  Sturmy laughed. ‘I’d be happy to do so, Sir Knight, but I was told those waters were …’ He turned and looked at the Genoese man. ‘… full of pirates.’

  ‘What do you trade?’ Swan asked.

  Sturmy counted on the tips of his fingers. ‘Lead. I have lead in the holds as ballast, but it is worth a mint here – they don’t have any. And hides. I have some tallow – all the way from the Russias – and wool, of course. Our own wool,’ he added, as if Swan would have believed that another country might export wool.