Pasha's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  With both relief and heightened tension, he spotted the man in the grey cap sauntering along the path back towards the palace and stopped, raising a hand. Shaping his lips, he gave a whistle which made the man in the grey hat stop in his tracks and look around in surprise. Skiouros waved and beckoned and the man frowned, pointing at his chest in question. Skiouros nodded and then stepped back behind the tree.

  With a baffled expression, the kitchen worker stepped off the main path and strode along the side track between the trees, looking for the gardener who had beckoned. The surprise the man had felt at being signalled paled into comparison at the surprise he felt as the handle of a rake smashed into his forehead with enough force to catapult him from his feet and make him somersault backwards, landing awkwardly face-down on the path.

  Skiouros stepped out from the tree, propping his rake against the bole. What he’d have given for his beloved macana stick instead of having to swing such a numb weapon from a hidden position… Still, it had worked as planned and, though the cook was groaning, he was far from able to struggle right now. Crouching, Skiouros rolled him over. His eyes were turned up into his head and blood trickled from his mouth where he had bitten a piece from his lip during the blow. His forehead was an impressive sight. In a matter of seconds it had grown into a huge, bulbous lump and was beginning to turn purple.

  Skiouros stared at him and watched as the man’s wits left him and he slid into unconsciousness. With trepidation, the Greek checked his pulse and breathing. He was still alive. The state of his head suggested that the blow had been but an angel’s breath short of sending him to the netherworld. Not that such an end would be a bad thing, Skiouros reminded himself. After all, this man was no innocent. He was in position in this place to kill a prince. He deserved a brutal end, really. But not before a little useful information had been wheedled from him – in particular the identity of other conspirators. Straightening, Skiouros looked around cautiously. He was sure it had been quiet enough, but the gardeners could be anywhere so it was always worth checking. Fortunately he could see no one and there was no untoward sound above the gentle breeze in the leaves.

  Taking a breath, he bent and picked the wounded cook up by the wrists, lifting him and dragging him over his shoulder before heaving him up and settling him into place. Now he had to move quickly. Life would be short and very unpleasant if he were found carrying a wounded staff member around the grounds. Praying almost continuously for solitude, Skiouros carried his burden through the gardens and back to the half-moon kiosk. As he passed inside and turned to close the doors, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  Time was still of the essence. He could not keep the man restrained for long. And even with the large number of staff at the palace, Ottoman organisation was so thorough and efficient that the man’s absence would swiftly be noted. The very best Skiouros could hope for was an hour before that absence began to cause alarm and the palace would become alert. Suspicion would fall on the victim at first, since he had been seen leaving the palace, but that suspicion would be short-lived, for once the ghazi at the gate were consulted it would be discovered that he had passed back through the outer wall again. A little further enquiry would reveal that he had not passed the inner gate back to the main palace complex. That would put the missing man somewhere in the gardens. And Skiouros was under no illusion that blame would quickly attach itself to the newest man.

  By sundown the guards would be looking to interview him. It was possible, of course, that he could stash the cook somewhere and protest his innocence. But there was little chance of success there. His guise was good, but would hardly hold up against interrogation. Plus he had no alibi, and he was very well aware that even the threat of torture would be enough to make him cry like a babe. So as soon as they came looking for him, he couldn’t afford to be found.

  Time was short. He had to get out and had to get the unconscious cook out with him. But there was simply no hope of him doing it alone. He would have to scrawl a message for his friends and hope that they were not delayed. Either Parmenio, Dragi or Diego checked the wall outside his room four or five times a day for any messages. So far he’d had cause to leave none. Now, all of a sudden, it would be a critically urgent missive which couldn’t wait.

  The window in the outer wall was too small for a person to pass through – it was a defensive perimeter wall, after all. Half a foot wide and little more than a foot tall, the window was enough to let in light and, against the possibility that the occupant preferred darkness, it had a thick wooden shutter. Grabbing the white chalky stone he had collected from one of the nearby garden paths, Skiouros scrawled ‘Help – urgent’ in Italian on the dark wood, hoping that the words would not draw comment from one of the very rare passers-by. The chances of any locals having a command of Italian were miniscule, but the very presence of a foreign tongue here might raise comment.

  *

  Parmenio and Diego listened to the sunset prayer call echoing across the roofs of the city and shared an anxious look. ‘We’re running late. I don’t think we can wait for him,’ the Spaniard murmured.

  Parmenio nodded. Dragi had been summoned to the imperial naval headquarters across the water in Galata in the early afternoon and had been gone ever since. The other two had held off the latest of their regular visits to the Eski Sarayi, waiting tensely to find out what had called the Romani away and kept him absent for so long but, as the afternoon wore on, they had become increasingly uneasy at having left Skiouros to his own devices with no contact.

  ‘Alright. We go. But we need to be fast. Anything could be happening with Dragi.’

  Quickly, the two men threw on their local-style draped coats and jammed on their heads the blue skullcaps that labelled them as Christians citizens of the empire. Dragi had reasoned that there was almost no chance of the pair being able to pass as anything but what they were, but most suspicions would be allayed by them donning the gear of Christian subjects of the sultan. Neither grabbed their sword, though both looked wistfully at the sheathed weapons in the back room before they rolled their shoulders and, bidding good evening to the matron of the house whose continued goodwill overrode the surly unhappiness of young David, they unlatched the door and stepped out into the street.

  Hurrying up the street towards the crest of the hill, where Balat became Phanar and the populace shifted from Jewish to Greek, the pair pulled their coats tight against the evening breezes that seemed to be funnelled through the vertiginous streets of the city into chilling blasts of cold. Looking ahead up the cobbled slope with its detritus and murk, Parmenio cleared his throat and spoke in a low whisper. ‘Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?’

  Diego nodded without turning his head. ‘Three men, not far behind. They have been with us since we left the house.’

  ‘What do you want to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know how they managed it, but I can only assume that’s our opposition and they have tracked us to the Jew’s house. It’s the knights, I believe, not the Romani. They are not subtle, not good enough at such subterfuge. The Romani, I fear, would not have been seen.’

  ‘Can we deal with them?’

  ‘Probably,’ murmured Diego.

  ‘Then we should, before this gets any worse.’

  ‘Confront them, my friend. I will return in but a second.’ As Parmenio opened his mouth to object, Diego slipped into a side-alley and disappeared into the gloom of evening shadows. Parmenio, suddenly alone and feeling surprisingly vulnerable in the street, swallowed nervously and turned.

  ‘Well now, lads,’ he said in a pleasant tone, in his native Italian. ‘It seems that we have something of a problem.’

  The two figures he could see in the street in their dark cloaks were suddenly joined by a third from a doorway, and the three came to a halt. The one at the centre pulled back his hood to reveal a bald head, with a short beard and a face like a bulldog’s muzzle turned inside-out. Parmenio faltered. He’d been in enough brawls in his years to
recognise the face of a born killer before, and this was one such. Some men joined the holy orders for their faith or for redemption, or for the need to serve. Others joined simply because while orders such as the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John demanded discipline, respect and piety, they also granted a license to kill in a world ever more strictly defined by codes of conduct. It was no secret that the Hospitallers were not over-choosy about the targets of their naval actions in the eastern seas, and their galleys were oared by as many Jewish and Christian slaves as Muslims. All of which meant that that even good Christians like Parmenio and Diego had no reason to feel secure around such knights.

  The men to either side of the ugly brute removed their own hoods, and neither of them looked pretty or jolly, either. Parmenio felt the absence of Diego by his side keenly under that trio of gazes and noted with a speeding of the heart that each of them reached down toward swords belted tight at their side beneath the cloaks, their fingers hovering close to the hilts.

  ‘Not subtle, that, my friends: planning to cut down a man in the street. The Ottoman authorities tend to frown on that kind of thing.’ His voice rose a notch in the hope of attracting attention, but the street remained empty and silent.

  ‘You keep poor company for a good God-fearing Italian,’ sneered one with wispy facial hair and a scar that ran from nose to chin, giving his lips an odd, unpleasant shape.

  ‘God doesn’t seem to mind,’ Parmenio grinned, as he spotted Diego emerging from another alleyway behind them with a short length of timber in his hand, creeping quietly up the street.

  ‘My preceptor,’ announced the third man, ‘has authorised me to offer an amnesty to you and even to that half-breed Spanish moro you travel with on the condition that you return with us to the monastery of Saint Benoit in Galata and bend your efforts henceforth to the good of the Church, and not of your heretic friend and his sultan. I will, however, make this offer just once.’

  The big bulldog-face in the centre looked less than impressed at the idea, and as Parmenio tried not to laugh, the man broke into a vicious smile at the likelihood of impending violence instead of reconciliation.

  ‘I am, as you say, a good son of the true Church,’ Parmenio smiled, ‘but I have to admit that, given the choice between a Constantinople under the rule of a man like Bayezid, who lets even your sort roam the streets unmolested, or a Constantinople under the control of the depraved Borgia Pope and of Torquemada’s black-robed murderers, I think the Turks win on a basic scale of humanity.’

  He tried not to grin too broadly as behind the three men, Diego reached down with his empty hand and grasped bulldog-face’s sword. As the big man felt a faint pull at his belt, his face creased into a puzzled frown and he turned to look down.

  The pommel of his own sword, jerked from its scabbard, hit that hideous, confused face square on, smashing into the bridge of his nose as the Spaniard ripped the blade free. Bulldog reeled, blood exploding from his ruined nose, and the pair by his side turned in shock to find Diego behind them with a length of timber in one hand and a solid, utilitarian crusader’s blade in the other.

  Even as the dazed and agonised brute collapsed to the ground, Diego smacked another in the arm with the club and then drove it end-on into his stomach, causing him to explode in a gust of fetid breath and double over in pain. As he ignored the two wounded men and turned to the third, Diego threw the sword towards Parmenio.

  The captain panicked for a moment and flinched away from the cast blade, which fell to the ground close to his side. Diego rolled his eyes and Parmenio dipped down and collected it even as the winded knight staggered around. With a roar of sheer fury Bulldog thrashed, trying to rise to his feet, blood still sheeting down his front, and the move distracted the Spaniard for a moment, long enough for the man he faced to draw his own sword and step back. Ignoring the rest of the scene, Diego concentrated on his fresh opponent – the one who had done most of the talking. The man’s blade flicked out again and again, swiftly and accurately. He was clearly well trained and experienced with his sword. Diego, armed only with a piece of broken timber he had ripped from the rear window of a house as he ran down the narrow alleys, carefully angled each parry so that his club caught the flat of the enemy blade, turning it only slightly, but enough for the Spaniard to side-step out of danger, dancing on his toes and heels like the expert fencer he was. Indeed, twice during the flurry of blows he managed to lance out with his blunt weapon and deliver a sharp rap on his opponent, the last of which caught him on the wrist and almost caused him to drop the sword. The man recovered quickly and Diego was forced to defend himself once more.

  As his struggle continued, Parmenio moved against the staggering man, his mind racing. The very idea of putting a blade through a man who’d taken holy orders seemed unthinkable. And yet he quickly reminded himself that not only were these ‘holy warriors’ about to do just that to him, but also their order had attempted to assassinate a guest in the Papal court, were working with Muslim Romani, and were attempting to bring about a coup in the Ottoman court which would bring down the most progressive and moderate sultan the Osman throne had ever held.

  Hardening his heart, he squared up to the winded man, who was now recovering and straightening, reaching down to his weapon. Even now, Parmenio felt a momentary thrill of doubt and denial at his chosen course, but then he caught a glimpse of his enemy’s eyes and saw neither pity nor reason in them. The knight’s blade had slid two inches free of the scabbard’s collar when Parmenio’s stolen blade punched through his arming jacket, sliding through the wool and cloth garment with ease and sinking deep into the man’s chest, grating on ribs as the blade widened with its passage. Parmenio winced at the sound, a noise to which he would never become accustomed. He was peering into the mortally-wounded man’s panicked, staring eyes when Bulldog’s ham-like hand landed on his shoulder like a collapsing bridge, causing him to stagger and panic that his shoulder had fractured under the weight. The immense grip spun him away from the dying man to face that foul, blood-drenched visage.

  The sudden resurgence of the big brute caught Diego’s attention, and for a moment his defence faltered. The remaining swordsman took advantage of the moment to flick one blow at him, which carved a narrow line in his arm, and then turned and ran off down the street, sword still in hand. Diego’s head snapped back and forth between the fleeing knight and the beast who was now threatening Parmenio. He’d no idea how good the former sailor really was, but the way he was holding up the sword suggested that he wouldn’t last long against Bulldog.

  Parmenio caught sight of him past the roaring thug and bellowed ‘Go! Stop him getting away!’

  Diego reluctantly turned his back on the ongoing struggle and raced off after the fleeing knight. Ahead, he saw the man turn into a side alley, presumably hoping to lose his pursuer. Diego hefted his wooden club and raced on, slowing only as he reached the corner. The knight had chosen his escape route rather poorly. The alley was packed with rubble and detritus, and the Spaniard could see his quarry not far ahead, struggling to clamber over a broken crate.

  Diego narrowed his eyes and steadied his breath, drawing back his hand.

  With a grunt, he cast his club in an overhead arc and watched with satisfaction as the wooden baton sailed through the air and connected with the back of the knight’s head, sending him sprawling into the refuse. As soon as the man disappeared to the ground, Diego was moving, and a few moments later he was behind the filthy knight as he tried to rise, covered in multi-species excrement and a rat’s nest, his sword lost somewhere in the mess and his mind reeling from an almost concussive blow. Calmly, slowly, Diego reached down with distaste and retrieved the fallen sword. The stunned knight turned to face him, his expression a picture of bleak resignation.

  ‘Even merciful God will not forgive you for this, Spaniard.’

  Diego’s eyes hardened and he raised the filthy sword so that the point hovered near the man’s chin. ‘God most certainly will forgive me. Whether I w
ill forgive myself is in a great deal more doubt.’ Heaving in a deep breath, Diego lowered the tip of the sword.

  ‘Go.’

  The man blinked in surprise.

  ‘I have no stomach for killing crusaders over a foreign succession. Go now and do not look back.’

  The knight needed no further urging, turning and scrambling away over the mess into the darkness. Diego closed his eyes for a moment, trying to decide whether he had just been unaccountably noble, or a complete fool. On balance, he decided that the best he could hope for was both. Feeling the rising tide of a faint headache, he pinched the bridge of his nose and gently rubbed his temple. With a sigh, he turned and made his slow way back out into the street.

  Parmenio seemed miraculously on top of the situation further up the street. Despite being outsized and outclassed, he had a good long sword, while Bulldog brandished only a parrying dagger that he’d ripped from his other hip. While the big man was managing to turn aside most of Parmenio’s blows, a couple of reasonably convincing strikes had landed and the loss of blood and constant sharp pains they caused were starting to take their toll. Even as Diego slogged his weary way up the street, he watched another blow land, and then, finally, Parmenio spotted the opening he’d sought. His last blow slid into the big man’s neck and emerged beside his spine in a welter of blood.

  By the time Diego reached the scene of carnage, Parmenio had already hefted the smaller body and thrown it into a side alley among the dark and the refuse. He looked up at Diego.