Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Six

by Christian Cameron

  Swan raised his head.

  There were hundreds of men coming into the fortress. Swan could see the crowd, and see Hunyadi mounting near the water gate.

  He shrugged and went back to the new seams. ‘We’re taking water,’ he said.

  George glanced down – he was the bow oar. ‘So?’ he asked. ‘Nothing has swelled yet. You sure you’ve been in a boat before?’

  Swan’s Hungarian was much improved after two days. He wanted to tell the man that keeping quarterdeck watches in a war galley was not at all the same as directing the construction of overbuilt grain barges.

  He decided not to mention it.

  ‘You are satisfied?’ he asked.

  George sniffed – he didn’t even deign to reply.

  Swan got up on the little foredeck. There wasn’t really room. ‘Loaded?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Ladislav said. He, at least, was in great high spirits. ‘By God!’ he said.

  Swan clambered down the length of the big boat. It had seats from thwart to thwart, and he had to walk – jump, really – from bench to bench. But the gun barely dipped the bow, and four hundred pounds of stone had steeled the hull nicely – to Little George’s despair.

  ‘She will row like a pig,’ Little George had said.

  Given the grunting from his rowers, Swan suspected there was truth to the assertion.

  He took the tiller in the stern. He’d put a Venetian-style rudder on pintles in the stern – more efficient, he hoped.

  ‘Give way, now,’ he ordered.

  The rowers dipped their oars, and in a surprisingly short time, the big boat was moving well. Swan steered her, with some orders to the rowers, into the shallows by the big tree where men swam.

  ‘You’ll run aground!’ shouted Nicolai.

  Swan shrugged, ordered them to bring in their oars, and stood.

  ‘Why here?’ asked Little George.

  Old George laughed. ‘Because if the gun staves in the bow, we’ll all live,’ he said.

  ‘Fire,’ Swan called.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Little John said.

  The falconet fired, somewhere between a boom and a sharp crack. The whole boat shot backwards – indeed, the stern slammed into the bank.

  Water began to pour into the hull.

  ‘Shit,’ Swan said.

  They got the riverboat to shore, with little more than ten inches of freeboard, and men rowing while sitting up to their hips in water – but the current was weaker, and the rude pumps fore and aft shot water into the air as fast as the two youngest men could wield them.

  As soon as they had her on the little beach, she sank an inch, and they spent a frustrating half-hour pumping her dry. Swan lay in the water in the bottom of the boat with young Marco, forcing hemp rope into the open seams with a knife.

  But eventually the pumps took hold, the water shot higher in the air, and they dragged the boat up the bank. At the top, Swan stood with his hands on his hips, soaked to the skin and his clothes filthy from whatever it was that coated the baseboards of a grain barge. It was black and particularly slimy.

  ‘You are the great English crusader?’ said a deep, controlled voice.

  Swan turned, ready to be annoyed.

  Before him was a tall, thin man – indeed, as tall and thin as a man might be, with a full tonsure and a face so long that one’s first thought was of a horse. He wore the sparkling white wool of the Dominican order. Well back was a crowd of soldiers and some penitents, of all things – men in rags, with crosses. One had a whip.

  Janos Hunyadi sat on a riding horse with his sons and a dozen of his knights, and Father Pietro was there.

  Swan bowed.

  ‘The English are famous warriors,’ the man said in his loud voice. The voice was beautiful – fluid, rich, like good oil.

  Swan bowed again. ‘Belay the gun!’ he roared.

  Marco waved at him and passed a loop over the muzzle, having seen the gun move in the same instant. The boat was halfway up the little beach and at a bad angle, and the men hauling on the ropes were already tired.

  ‘And great heretics!’ shouted the friar. ‘Who can forget that the Bohemian heresy had its beginnings with that devil Wycliffe?’

  Swan ignored the man. He turned to the hundreds of soldiers watching. ‘Enough watching!’ he roared. ‘Get your useless arses down here and lay hand to a rope.’

  Then Swan suited action to word, leaping back down to the beach from the bank and seizing the rope behind Nicolai. Immediately, other men leaped in behind him, and in three great heaves the gunboat was all the way up the beach, her damaged stern clear of the water. Swan ran down the beach, slapped the stern, and whistled, and both Georges and Marco joined him and the four of them all but danced in celebration.

  ‘Why are we celebrating?’ asked Father Pietro.

  Swan slapped the planks again by the damaged stern. ‘Because the planks sprang when we struck the tree and the bank,’ he said. ‘Not from the force of the gun. We’re in business.’

  ‘You have probably just managed to offend Fra Giovanni, the most powerful prelate in these parts,’ Father Pietro said apologetically.

  Swan looked up. The man in the shining white robe was still standing, almost alone, on the bank.

  Swan walked along the hull, looking for further damage. Then he nodded to George and climbed back up the bank.

  ‘Apologies, Eminence,’ he said.

  ‘I am no one’s Eminence,’ Fra Giovanni shot back. ‘I am Fra Giovanni di Capistrano, God’s fist against the heretics, God’s sword against the infidels.’

  Swan bowed. ‘Tom Swan,’ he said. ‘Currently a boatbuilder.’ His tone was mocking. He knew what Bembo had thought of this man, and his own revulsion was immediate.

  Capistrano leaned forward. ‘Do not take that tone with me,’ he said. ‘I can see your sins.’

  Swan looked into the man’s eyes, trying to see past the obvious fanaticism.

  At his hip, Father Pietro said, ‘Master, Ser Suane is a fine knight, and has led a company of men to serve God and the crusade. He is himself a servant of Bessarion—’

  ‘Bessarion himself is suspected of heresy!’ Capistrano said. ‘And of his personal life I say nothing, but God knows his many sins.’

  Swan was suddenly angry. It was hard to describe why, and he knew it was a useless anger. But it was the same feeling he sometimes had in Italy when he saw someone’s useless younger son, an aristocrat, commanding something he did not understand, or bullying a woman, or ruining a bank.

  As if reading his mind, Father Pietro smiled and stepped between the men. ‘Fra Giovanni has raised an army of crusaders,’ he said. Swan noted how much his lilting voice sounded like that that Šárka used when she wanted men to listen to her.

  ‘Peasants,’ Capistrano said. ‘Heretics and degenerates and the filth of the earth, come to purify themselves in the struggle with the infidel.’

  Swan could see Hunyadi turning away.

  ‘Any carpenters?’ he asked the fanatic. ‘I understand Jesus was one. Perhaps he may have inspired some to join you?’

  ‘You blaspheme!’ Capistrano snapped.

  Swan stood his ground. ‘How, exactly?’ he asked. ‘Jesus was certainly a carpenter.’

  The two men glared at each other, eye to eye, for many heartbeats.

  ‘I may have carpenters among my men,’ Capistrano said. ‘I will preach on it.’ He turned suddenly and scrambled up the bank, leaving Swan with Father Pietro.

  ‘He is the great preacher!’ called Nicolai, and the Catholics all ran up the bank to the water gate and threw themselves on their knees.

  Capistrano raised his hand and blessed them. ‘This is the appropriate response, when God’s chosen commander, however unworthy, appears,’ he said to Swan.

  ‘You mean Hunyadi?’ Swan asked.

  ‘I am the Pope’s legate for the crusade! Capistrano roared.

  Swan bowed.

  ‘You were to have brought me money from Cardinal Carvajal,
Ser Suane,’ the friar said. More men came forward to be blessed, throwing themselves on to their knees.

  Swan shook his head. ‘All the money was for the Ban of Hungary,’ he said.

  Capistrano seemed to swell. ‘You gave the money Mother Church raised for crusade to that selfish lord? That arrogant nobleman who places his own power before the work of the Lord?’

  Hunyadi was already gone.

  Swan knelt, having shown enough backbone for a day. ‘Blessed father, I seek your blessing. I followed my orders – my orders from the Holy Father and two cardinals, to give the money to the captain general of the crusade.’ He looked up and met Capistrano’s entirely sane eyes. ‘Your name was never mentioned.’

  Capistrano seemed to change direction as easily as a Turkish horseman.

  ‘Then accept my blessing, Englishman. You are no Lollard, but a true son of Mother Church?’ Capistrano said, his beautiful, too-loud voice ringing in Latin over the whole boatyard.

  ‘I am,’ Swan said, because it was no farther from the truth than the claim that he had commanded a galley in combat.

  ‘Than accept my blessing, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ the Dominican said. ‘Now let me see if my flock will produce some carpenters. This boat of yours – this was not a failure?’

  Swan, still on his knees, shook his head. ‘I stove in the stern against the bank,’ Swan said. ‘I miscalculated.’

  ‘We all do,’ Capistrano said. ‘Now go with God, and build us a fleet.’

  ‘He is mad,’ Hunyadi said.

  ‘He is a living saint,’ Father Pietro said, but he was hesitant.

  A dozen of them were sitting at Hunyadi’s great table under his magnificent red awning. It was twilight – a long twilight.

  ‘I liked what I saw of your boat,’ Hunyadi said. Before the end of the day, they had refloated the boat, now called the Saint George, and fired a dozen rounds – with ball – from the falconet, and taken on no more than a few buckets of water. ‘The Turkish fleet is not far downriver,’ Hunyadi went on. ‘If we had three weeks, I think we might manage this.’ He shook his head. ‘But they will be on us tomorrow. Friday at the latest.’

  Swan savoured his wine. ‘I won’t have two boats with which to face them on Friday,’ he said.

  ‘Then we’re finished here. I will move the army to Barcsa and we will see what we can do there. Capistrano has raised a horde of locusts, not an army – twenty thousand useless mouths who are eating all the stores we have.’ He shrugged. ‘At least they can help move the wood.’

  Swan didn’t control himself. ‘Sweet Christ, we’re leaving?’

  Hunyadi’s captains all said much the same thing.

  László Hunyadi looked at Swan for a while, obviously considering something.

  ‘Pater,’ he said. ‘Listen. This is a strong place, eh?’

  ‘Of course,’ Hunyadi the elder said. ‘Why in the name of the saints do you think I chose it, lad?’

  Swan caught the notion from László’s eyes. ‘If we kept building boats …’ he said.

  László nodded emphatically. ‘It isn’t as though they can scale the walls with ships.’

  Hunyadi frowned. ‘They will blockade you,’ he said. ‘My spies say they have more than a hundred ships – enough to seal off the city and prevent you from launching your boats.’

  László sighed.

  Swan shook his head. ‘This is not a land fight,’ he said.

  The Hungarian captains looked at him.

  ‘The current off Kovin here is very strong,’ he said. ‘And there is no place on the opposite bank to provide refuge. The curve in the river and the width – or lack – make any kind of station-keeping dependent on rowing.’ He smiled wolfishly. ‘No fleet on earth can hold station against a current all day and all night.’

  Hunyadi looked around at his people. He beckoned to a young Serb nobleman and asked him something in Serb. The two went back and forth for some time.

  László pointed. ‘My father asks how long the Danube will be this high and fast. The Serb says, always. My father asks if the current is reliable. The Serb says it is even worse if we get a few days of rain. It was a very hard winter. There must still be snow in the north.’

  Hunyadi shrugged. He turned in his chair and faced his son and Swan.

  ‘I understand. This man supports what you say.’ He looked away. ‘But I order otherwise. It is a foolish risk. That is my word. You will take all the workers, and your companies, and some of the zealot’s peasants, and retire to Slankamen.’

  ‘But …’ Swan began.

  Ser Hargitai planted himself in front of Swan. In a quiet tone, László said, ‘No one argues when my father gives a direct order.’

  Swan took a deep breath. ‘When do we march?’ he asked.

  The senior Hunyadi nodded as if he hadn’t heard a word. ‘At dawn,’ he said.

  Almost three thousand peasant crusaders were encamped – if lying in the wheat could be called camping – outside the earthen walls. They rose in the morning, heard mass, and then came forward willingly to carry the wood – and the finished frames that would not fit on wagons. Swan had a different notion, and ordered the one finished frame to be numbered and dismantled.

  The ready boats were filled with wood and tools – and workers. They were gone around the bend towards the Serbian town of Smederevo upriver.

  Swan watched his company form with pride, mounted his riding horse, and marched back north. Leaving Di Vecchio’s grave, and the ground they’d fought the Turks to hold.

  ‘Sic transit Gloria mundi,’ he said.

  László Hunyadi laughed without bitterness. ‘Did you think we would beat the Sultan in a day?’ he asked. ‘My father almost chose not to fight. Even now – only this mad monk and our little cavalry fight are keeping him … interested. And the Pope’s money.’

  Swan nodded. But it was a long day. Just after midday they had to cross the Danube, so far north of Belgrade that the fortress and the rock on which it stood were just barely visible. The riverboats were waiting for them. The passage, including untacking and retacking all the horses, took three hours. They were a tired and very hungry army when they reached the camp – an open camp without walls.

  Swan lay in his tent, alone, and tried to imagine why the great Hunyadi had chosen to leave an impregnable position on the clear side of the Danube to move to an open camp on the Turkish side.

  The next morning – Thursday, the first of July of the year of Our Lord 1456, saw the sun rise on a hundred men digging new saw pits into the riverbank. They were foot soldiers of Hunyadi’s private army, and the lord had ordered them to dig. But before noon they were joined by legions of Capistrano’s peasants.

  As soon as the pits were dug, pre-cut beams were wedged into place with heavy stones – pairs of beams, precisely positioned for the huge twelve- or fifteen-foot-long saws, miracles of metallurgy, which had come from Belgrade.

  In an hour, the large-scale production of boards had begun.

  In two hours, Swan had stopped eight of the pits from cutting oak, and moved them to fir.

  ‘The boats won’t last!’ Little George said.

  ‘We only need them once,’ Swan said.

  All of the boatbuilders frowned in disgust. Even young Marco.

  The former carpenter’s apprentices were vital men – and they went to work teaching other soldiers to saw. But after the break for food at midday, Father Pietro appeared.

  ‘You may dislike Fra Giovanni all you like,’ he said. ‘But he has sent you a hundred or more carpenters. And a German boatbuilder from the Rhine.’

  They worked until it was too dark to work any more. Out on the plain, where a handful of terrified peasants nonetheless scythed the magnificent wheat around the town’s palisade, Swan’s company and Hunyadi the Younger’s both drilled. They rode up and down, mounted and dismounted, and then, as the light faded and the day grew a little cooler, they began to move on foot.

  No T
urks appeared. Swan attended Lord Hunyadi, who was seeing to it that his magazines were serving out campaign food to his personal army, which he was moving north in the morning.

  ‘We will need your force of arms in a few days,’ he said. He spoke briefly and somewhat perfunctorily of forcing a battle. Swan wondered who he was trying to convince.

  In fact, after two days of listening to the great man, Swan thought that the Ban was looking for an excuse to march away.

  Friday, the second of July.

  In the first blush of morning, the army of the Ban, his private army, about four thousand men, marched away, headed south to Belgrade.

  László Hunyadi had the many ‘crusader’ peasants put to work building an earthwork and towers – simple wooden watchtowers.

  Swan had all the boats pulled up on shore – every one – and pulled inside the new works. For good measure, he had them covered in spare tents.

  Out in the fields to the north, his company and László’s marched back and forth.

  They had several hundred borrowed Serb horsemen, and the younger Hunyadi sent them off south on their own bank of the river, looking for Turks.

  ‘The danger is,’ Hunyadi the Younger noted, ‘that they won’t come back. They’re riding into Serbia.’

  ‘Where is the border?’ Swan asked.

  László gave him a troubled smile. ‘Border?’ he asked. ‘There is no border.’

  In mid-afternoon, a pair of galleys appeared in the middle distance.

  Swan made the long, hot climb back to the new watchtower. It was at least shaded, and had a breeze. He lay on the wooden floor, looking under his hand at the two galleys as they swept like giant water insects upstream. He saw them hit the current off the Tisza river mouth and one of them was briefly dragged shoreward. Swan hadn’t thought to prepare a boarding party, and anyway the Turkish ship never came close to the bank – but had Swan prepared a battery, he might have put a few balls into her.

  He shook his head. And yet, something whispered to him that he should not draw undue attention to his earthworks.

  The two big Turkish ships vanished to the west, but they reappeared an hour later, flying, with wind and current carrying them at a breakneck pace, and they ran downstream effortlessly. One of the Turkish captains clearly wanted a closer look, but the current fooled him, and his ship almost turned end for end in the eddy downstream of the Tisza – and shot away downstream.