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

by Christian Cameron

  Swan tried to look as if he was angry. ‘I am looking to make a fool of this Genoese,’ he said, pointing at the man.

  ‘That would be neighbourly!’ Sturmy said. He composed himself and tried to look contrite.

  ‘If,’ Swan said, shaking his finger, ‘you dye your own wool …’ He paused and yelled, ‘You stupid whoreson! Are you wode? Listen to me!’

  ‘I am listening!’ Sturmy shouted back. ‘And the Devil take me if I’ll ever leave my own fulling house again! Ships are for shipmen!’ He spat right back.

  ‘I imagine you use alum,’ Swan said, in a tone of voice a man might use to reason with a child.

  Sturmy began to grin. ‘I use it when I can afford it.’

  ‘There’s a port – the cream of the jest is it used to be a Genoese port. In Asia Minor, called Phokaia.’ He nodded at Fra Tommaso. ‘And Rhodes would take all your lead. It’s close to Phokaia.’

  ‘Phokaian alum!’ Sturmy said, and the Genoese captain’s head shot round. Some things translate. Some are easy to pluck out of the air.

  Swan spent some time explaining to the Genoese that Phokaia sounded very much like an English swear word. He was explicit and embarrassed the merchant, who didn’t like to hear bawdy talk in front of the clergy. ‘He’s sailing away?’

  ‘For Genoa,’ Swan said piously.

  ‘Bah. Stupid foreigners.’ The merchant went over the side.

  The English ship departed the port of Alexandra before darkness fell. She was a big round ship, as big as the Venetians’ and heavily built – not fast, but a virtual fortress, high off the water and with heavy fighting castles.

  Fra Tommaso sat on the edge of his own bunk, dabbing Swan’s forehead and eyes with a damp cloth. Swan had a headache like that of a man who had drunk a great deal of alcohol – another thing he hadn’t done.

  ‘Your Englishmen seemed to obey you quite readily,’ the old man said softly. ‘Where did you send them?’

  ‘Phokaia, for alum,’ Swan said. ‘He had a firman from the Sultan in Constantinople. The Genoese was being a fool.’

  ‘That is why the Genoese are losing their empire,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘They’ve created a race of rich, entitled fools who can no longer see beyond their own greed. Why are men so vicious? It is no wonder God has sent us Mehmet. It is what we deserve.’

  Swan closed his eyes and thought of Khatun Bengül. He’d been in Alexandria three days, and somehow he hadn’t managed even the most casual encounter.

  Chastity pained him like alum on an open cut.

  The galley sailed north with the dawn, and spent three weeks beating up against the winds – rowing into headwinds that exhausted the rowers and sheltering in coves, first in Cyprus and then on the south coast of Asia. Finally they made Rhodos. The rowers didn’t even get to leave the ship. Half a dozen young French knights came aboard as soon as they beached, and another dozen archers.

  ‘Chios is under attack,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘You may get to see it yet.’

  They filled their water jars and their biscuit bin and went back to sea, oarsmen cursing. But after a few hours, when a favourable southerly filled the mainsail, the oarsmen had all of their fighting kit filling the benches and the catwalk – mail was polished, and swords and glaives and vicious short javelins were touched up and sharpened, had new oil applied, and the like. The archers took out small whetstones and retouched their best points.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Swan asked.

  Fra Tommaso shrugged and spat downwind.

  ‘Bad enough, eh? The rumour is the Grand Turk has sent one of his great lords to sea with a fleet – a hundred galleys and fifty troopships. They intend to land and take Lesvos and Chios. A French pilgrim says the rumour in Aleppo is that they’ll go for Rhodos itself.’ The old knight smiled wickedly. ‘To stop the Turks, the order has three good galleys and two very decrepit ones, as well as a dozen smaller ships and about two thousand men. We should be fine.’

  Swan went to sharpen his sword.

  When it was his turn at the tiller, he noticed how the load of armoured men changed the ship’s handling – the fineness of her entry was altered, and the way she turned. And the rate of her acceleration and deceleration under oars. The ship was heavier by almost twenty men and their gear, and the men were all topside, on the weather decks, where their weight had the most effect on the narrow ship’s balance.

  However, no one watched him while he steered. He liked that part.

  He also liked the new device a pair of Burgundian mercenaries brought aboard – a fire discharger made of iron and built like a barrel, with long staves and hoops. It was mounted on the galley’s bulwarks at the gunwale, and the two Burgundians said it would throw a one-ounce ball five hundred paces and pierce armour.

  Swan pretended to believe them, admired its ugly deadliness, and went back to his hammock.

  They camped on a beach on the south end of Chios. Swan had never smelled mastic before – the scent was heady. He climbed the beach, under the watchful eye of a shepherd. Two men with crossbows eyed him carefully from a tower which proved to guard a small grove of the trees that gave the world’s richest resin.

  One of the guards threw something at him. He laughed, and pointed.

  It is possible to look at a man’s face and conclude that he’s not offering violence. Swan was sure – despite the throw – that the man meant it in a good-natured way. After a moment of confusion, he looked around until he found the rock the man had thrown.

  But it wasn’t rock. It was a solid mass of resin the size of his hand. He picked it up and waved it at the guards, who waved back. Then, after clearing a section of sand on his lump, he flaked off a small piece and put it in his mouth.

  It was a little like chewing pine tar. But all his life he’d heard it described as good for teeth, so he continued chewing for some time, while he looked at the walls, the orchards and the rock.

  He walked back to the base of the tower and shouted up. ‘Greetings! Can you understand me?’ in Greek.

  They understood well enough. The smaller man came down the wooden tower immediately and opened a door. ‘A Frank who speaks Greek? This is a great wonder,’ the man said.

  Swan laughed. ‘Thanks for the mastic.’

  ‘Think nothing of it!’ the man said. ‘It’s dull here. But so many men come to steal it – it defies belief, the viciousness of the barbarians. Genoese and Turks – much the same, eh? Oh – my pardon if you are in fact Genoese.’

  ‘I am in fact a Frank from England. Thule. Far to the north.’ Swan looked at the tower. ‘This is all to guard the mastic?’

  ‘North of Lesvos? That’s not Thule. There’s Samothrace, I suppose.’ The man shrugged. ‘And then the mainland and Thrace. Thessalonika, I hear, is quite a city. You are from north of Thessalonika?’

  Swan suspected that geography was not going to be the key to the conversation. ‘I’m looking to find some people …’ he said.

  ‘Franks always are. Listen – you seem nice enough. Here on Chios, when Franks come to collect rents – often they are killed and their bodies left to the beasts. Eh? And yes, my foreign friend, this is all to guard mastic. See all the rock? It is very hard to grow barley here. Barley is at the north end of the island. Even sheep hate this rock. Eh?’ He grinned. ‘If God had not given us mastic, we’d have nothing.’

  Swan nodded sagely. ‘I will consider what you say, as I have very little interest in being killed as a tax collector.’

  ‘In this you show real wisdom,’ said the man.

  ‘You know there is a Turk fleet on its way here?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Pagans as well as thieves. This is why God has given us the crossbow.’ The Greek islander was missing no teeth – indeed, his head seemed to be full of them. He was an excellent advertisement for mastic.

  ‘Have you seen them?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Of course!’ the Greek answered.

  Swan dug in his purse and produced a nameless silver coin roughly the size of a silver ma
rk from England. And worn perfectly flat.

  The man made it disappear with the same facility as that with which Swan had made it appear. ‘Two days ago. Two galleys. They watered south of Mesta. You are very polite, for a Frank.’

  Swan shared some wine from his leather bottle and the man found him even more polite and offered him several pounds of mastic.

  ‘At a very good price,’ he added.

  After some genteel dickering, Swan carried away about twenty pounds of the stuff. He had no idea if he’d been swindled or not. It seemed cheap enough. Five gold ducats had purchased the whole basket. He carried it down to the ship, almost lost his investment trying to negotiate the beach, and then spent his evening rebagging the whole and putting it in waxed linen. He pointed the bags out to Peter. ‘That’s your wages,’ he said.

  Peter frowned. ‘I am not so well paid, I tink.’

  Swan found the galley’s commander working on his own armour, and passed the news of the Turkish galleys. Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘Could be true. You have to be leery of these heretics. Many of them prefer the Turks to us. Eh? Be a good lad and do my tassets, please?’

  Midday, and they weathered the Korfas headland. Asai was a stone’s throw off their starboard oar tips, and the wind was directly in their teeth.

  Which proved to be altogether in their favour.

  ‘Ready about!’ Fra Tommaso screamed. Swan hadn’t really ever heard the old man stirred to emotion before – perhaps flares of anger, but nothing like this urgency. Swan was in his hammock, forward with the archers – he rolled out, grabbed his sword, and ran for the helm, feet pounding along the catwalk.

  The oarsmen cursed, but those on the port side were already reversing benches. And behind him, the vessel’s sailors had the sail on the great yard, ready to be raised.

  Swan leaped on to the command deck from the catwalk. Fra Tommaso pointed forward over the bow, and Swan turned.

  There, framed against the strait, was a fleet that seemed uncountable – more than a hundred vessels of all sizes. In the van there were at least a dozen military galleys, and most of them had their sails up and their bows threw white waves as they came on.

  ‘The Turks,’ Fra Tommaso said.

  Behind Swan’s shoulder, Peter grunted. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he said.

  The Blessed Saint John turned like a dancer and had her main yard aloft and her great lateen full in the time it would take a pious man to repeat a single paternoster. And her clean hull and her beautiful lines paid off – in an afternoon’s run, she gradually buried the Turks below the horizon, and they docked at Rhodos without further incident – that is, without food or sleep for two days.

  But two thousand professional soldiers could accomplish an immense amount of work in a day. When the Turkish fleet hove into view on the northern horizon, the towers had their hoardings up, and Swan had a brief instruction on the use of a light artillery piece. The noise it made on firing caused him to twist his ankle on a chunk of rubble, but he knew what it took to put several ounces of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur into the iron tube.

  The tube in question was attached to a frame of good Greek oak. The whole contraption looked like a candlestick bolted to a table.

  Peter watched the whole performance with contempt. ‘What can it do that my bow cannot do?’ he asked. ‘Ah – it can explode and kill me. My bow cannot do this.’ He handed his master a beautiful Turkish bow and two quivers of arrows. ‘I found these for you. If your new rank doesn’t preclude a little archery.’

  When the Turkish fleet came over the horizon in the hours after dawn, the garrison was resting, the walls were barely manned, and the ships were safely inside the fortified mole. The only men working were slaves and conscripted Greeks, who were toiling with picks under a sun already ferocious despite the season, improving the network of trenches behind the weakest portion of the wall.

  Swan rose late, with the other Donats from his section of the fortifications who had stood guard or worked far into the night. He climbed the windmill nearest to the English bastion and from it he watched the Turks disembark.

  Sir John Kendal, the senior English knight under the turcopolier, and the acting commander of the forces in the English bastion, came up the windmill and seemed surprised to find Swan watching the Turks. He nodded and leaned his elbows on the edge of the parapet.

  ‘Do they intend an actual siege?’ Swan asked, after a period of silence. ‘Sir?’ he added.

  Sir John seemed on the verge of muttering a platitude, but he paused. ‘You’ve seen some fighting?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Swan answered.

  ‘You’re the young hellion who gave Sir Kenneth the bruise on his neck?’ Sir John managed a thin-lipped smile.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Sir John nodded. ‘Fra Tommaso speaks very highly of you. So you know they aren’t landing any artillery.’

  That’s what I was getting at, Swan thought. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a razzia. A raid. They’ll burn our crops and kill our Greek peasants and sail away.’ The older knight shrugged.

  Swan might have agreed, except that the men he was watching on the hillside opposite him were men he’d seen in Constantinople – sipahis, or elite cavalry. They had no horses, but they were the Sultan’s best assault troops, and Swan had a difficult time imagining that the Sultan had sent his best troops – noblemen’s sons, no less – to burn crops.

  ‘They seem very interested in our section of wall,’ Swan noted.

  Sir John fingered his beard. ‘So they do.’

  Swan decided to take the plunge. ‘Those men there – in the silvery armour – are sipahis. Noble cavalry. The Sultan’s own.’

  Sir John raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘I had no idea.’ He smiled the sort of smile that older men give to young enthusiasts who assume that older men have never seen or done anything themselves.

  Swan was defensive. ‘I saw them in Constantinople,’ he said.

  Sir John nodded. ‘I’ve been fighting them for my whole adult life,’ he said.

  Swan went down the windmill, determined to keep his mouth shut in future.

  Late afternoon of the first full day. Thus far, not a single man had been killed or wounded. The Turks had summoned the town, sending a messenger and shooting arrows with demands for immediate surrender on very lenient terms. The knights, of course, refused.

  Shadows lengthened, and the word came along the walls that everyone was to watch carefully. Dawn and dusk were the times when both sides would try stratagems, alarms and surprises.

  Swan was at his ‘frame’, as the little gonne was called. He and his three Burgundian gunners were the crew. The Burgundians were less fiery than they had been in the days before the siege. The Turkish camp was like a city, larger than Rhodos itself. The Turkish fleet was vast and seemed to cover every beach in every direction.

  ‘How many men do you think they haf?’ one of the Burgundians asked him. ‘Sir?’ he added.

  They all sounded like Peter. Their English was pretty good – half of the Duke of Burgundy’s army was made up of Englishmen, and the language was a lingua franca, but among themselves they spoke Dutch.

  Swan shrugged. He was in half-plate, with a chain shirt under and a fustian arming coat under that – he was very hot, and emptied every canteen of water that was brought to him. He now owned leg harnesses – courtesy of the order’s armoury – and they were polished and ready, lying on his narrow bed. He wore Alexandro’s thigh-high leather boots instead.

  He wiped his face with a linen rag. ‘About twenty thousand, give or take a thousand,’ he said.

  ‘Christ crucified, we will all be horribly kilt,’ muttered the senior Burgundian, Karl. The man had the nose of a heavy drinker and something was wrong with his eyes.

  Swan ignored him, although he wasn’t too happy himself. His burst of enthusiasm for the Church militant had landed him in this desperate outpost …

  There were men moving on the h
illside opposite.

  Swan plucked his armet off his head and put it on the stone walkway. He leaned out over the crenellations and looked.

  A pair of arrows leapt from bowmen hidden in the rocks near the beach. Swan saw the bows move and ducked back. A pair of light arrows struck the parapet.

  ‘Let’s fire,’ he said. He pointed at where a dozen Turks were pushing big siege shields.

  Next to him, Peter suddenly stood up to his full height and loosed a shaft. He didn’t loose at the men with the bows, but at the small crowd huddled on the hillside opposite, with wicker shields – siege mantlets.

  His arrows struck a mantlet and pierced it.

  The Burgundians hung back, as if actually using the gonne frightened them.

  Swan ladled powder into the bore and ran it down. Then put a heavy patch of raw cotton atop it and rammed that down, and finally pushed a one-ounce stone ball down – laboriously chipped from Parian marble, no doubt, he thought. He took a goose quill from the pouch on Karl’s waist, ignoring the man, and aimed the gonne as he’d been taught – as he would a bow, a little to the left of the target because of the wind, and a little high – he put bricks under the front legs of the frame. In the time he did this, Peter loosed nine arrows.

  Karl shook his head. ‘We should wait for orders,’ he said.

  Swan was aiming again.

  He heard, very clearly, the unmistakable sound of steel on stone. Or rather, he felt it, rather than heard it. He looked around.

  He rammed the goose quill full of black powder into the touch-hole of the gonne. He felt the very slight grinding under his thumb that meant the goose quill was in contact with the powder in the barrel – the main charge.

  The Turks had four mantlets set up, and a shower of arrows began to fall on the English wall. The Burgundians backed away down the nearest ladder.

  ‘Fire?’ Swan said, suddenly feeling foolish. The youngest of the Burgundians, also Karl, had the portfire. And he was climbing down the ladder.

  Swan leaned over the wall. ‘Stop. I order you. And get your arses back on the wall or I’ll …’ Swan stopped, unsure what he’d do.