Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Six

by Christian Cameron

  He was painfully aware that the ring had protected him, and his own mortality shone before him like the grail to one of the Arthur’s knights.

  On the morning of the eleventh, he knelt before Father Pietro and made confession. He was human enough that he couldn’t help but notice Father Pietro’s smile when he related copulating while a priest was saying mass. Father Pietro looked elsewhere, and sighed.

  ‘You are a hardened sinner,’ Father Pietro said. ‘And yet not nearly as hardened as some. And I suspect you do your penance every day that you lead these men and build these boats.’

  ‘But I enjoy it,’ Swan proclaimed.

  Father Pietro shrugged. ‘When you go home, if you live, the crusade will have washed you free of sin,’ he said.

  He didn’t sound as if he believed it, and Swan thought of the killing of Hergen Hauzdaun. Of the Wolf of Rimini, and the plot to seize Venice. The imp that had led him to taunt better-born boys at court and annoy the priests who served his father led him to say, ‘I’ve committed more sins for this crusade that it is likely to wash clean.’

  Father Pietro gave him a benediction anyway, and Swan went to oversee the shifting of the guns that they had into the boats.

  They had one demi-culverin that would throw a six-pound iron ball to a truly shocking distance. It used two pounds of powder to fire it once – and Swan allowed Ladislav just three rounds of his precious supply of German-made black powder. The results were terrible – the powder barely got the projectile out of the barrel in the second shot after a superb blast from the first, and Ladislav cursed and said the powder was bad. Swan put Marco – the young Venetian had more engineering experience than any of the men-at-arms – in charge of swaying the guns into the boats, and he went to the powder tent, where they opened every barrel and found that, almost without exception, the charcoal had sifted down to the bottom, leaving the sulphur and saltpetre crystals standing proud at the top of the barrel.

  Then they spent a day carefully restirring the barrels with the new oar blades, drying the resulting mixture on tents laid flat for the purpose and then carefully scooping it back into the barrels. They left a fine haze of charcoal dust over the operation, and Swan ordered all the cooking fires put out.

  This did not enhance his popularity in a camp that was running out of wine, and had lost all its women.

  Towards evening, Grazias returned with more than two hundred Albanians and Greeks. They set their own camp and feasted on bullocks they drove in – almost certainly taken from Serb farmers.

  On the twelfth of July, he saw the last four gunboats – all oak, and all lovingly constructed – finished under the hands of their German boatbuilder. The last four guns – all falconets – went into the bows. By mid-morning the operations were complete, and László ordered the whole flotilla on to the river fully loaded. He took one of the German ships and Swan took the other. Every ship had twenty-five men-at-arms in full harness and as many lesser-armed men as could be crammed aboard. The gunboats were each rowed by twenty men, and could take another twenty sitting inboard on the seats. They could only be in half-armour. Every German and Hungarian man-at-arms clamoured to be taken – even to row. Swan’s English archers all manned one boat together, and practised using the falconet in the bows as part of the final test of the newly mixed powder.

  Altogether, the flotilla had thirty-two boats. They rowed out into the stream well enough, but moving in formation defeated them for hours, let alone the ideal formation, which Hunyadi felt would be an arrowhead tipped by the German river ships. However, both Swan and Hunyadi agreed that the reverse – a deep crescent or ‘V’ with the arms well forward made by the gunboats and the heavily armed river ships at the back – might make the best formation to use the guns.

  In twelve hours of rowing, they improved immensely. But going from the deep V to the arrowhead – with or against the current – took complicated rowing and backing water to maintain place, and Swan saw – increasingly – that the Turks had anchored their line on a chain for good reason.

  However, they trained all that day, firing a few shots – blank, and wadded only with turf – while Grazias and his stradiotes rode down both banks of the Danube as far as Belegiš, almost five miles away, to keep their activities secret.

  In Swan’s part of the force, every man rowed. He pointed out that once the Turks began to hit them with arrows, everyone was a potential rower.

  He noted that the next day, a third of his Italians and most of the Germans had shed their leg armour. Some had shed everything but a coat of mail and a gorget or bevoir, and a few brave souls were stripped to hose and shirts under brigantines and open-faced helmets. It was as hot as Swan had ever known it to be. Greece and Turkey were not as hot as this.

  He swam after he had eaten onion soup with excellent bread. Then he visited all the sentries.

  As the sun began to go down over the far bank, a pair of messengers – Székely cavalrymen, both of them – appeared at the gates of the town. Swan watched them shouting at the militia captain, and then turning their weary horses and riding for the camp.

  He sent Clemente for Hunyadi the Younger, and fetched Ser Columbino, Ser Orietto and Constantine Grazias. He already knew what the messengers would say. Or rather, he feared they might say that Belgrade had fallen, but barring that, they could only have one purpose.

  László came, stripped of finery but with his hair wet. He sprawled across two of Swan’s camp stools while his knights stood about him. Ser Hargitai and Ser Pangratius – Pongrácz Dengelegi – fetched stools and exchanged banter with Ser Niccolo Zane and Juan di Silva.

  Von Nymandus had the guard that night. He was in full harness despite the heat, and he brought the messengers and bowed despite his age and the weight of his armour.

  ‘From your father the Ban, my lord,’ he said.

  László took off his hat, and Swan, who wasn’t wearing one, bowed his head.

  ‘My lord, the voivode of Hungary begs that you will bring your flotilla down the river to Belgrade tomorrow, as the sun begins to set.’ Both men knelt, despite their scarred faces.

  Hunyadi nodded. ‘How bad is it, Mikal?’ he asked the nearer man.

  ‘My lord, the Upper Town is afire, and the fortress itself is badly damaged. Your father and Capistrano have both been to the fortress and back. The Italian monk has moved his people to the banks of the Sava. The Turks fired cannonballs at them and killed them in rows, but still they roar defiance.’ He shrugged, dismissing the efforts of twenty thousand peasants. ‘I am to say, “The city will fall tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, if not relieved. They are out of crossbow bolts and the black-powder-which-burns and many other things.”’ The man called Mikal looked at Swan. ‘I am to say to the English knight that the Turks seem to fear nothing by river. They keep poor watch. The Italian gunner has moved six culverins to a commanding position overlooking the Turkish fort on the western shore. He says, “I will not fire until the fleet fires.”’

  Hunyadi nodded. ‘Tell my father we are ready. And as we are out of wine, we might as well hurry.’ His knights laughed, and even Ser Columbino smiled.

  When the two Székely were gone, Swan nodded at Clemente, who poured Hunyadi and his knights the last two bottles of his hoarded Veronese wine. ‘We are not ready,’ he said.

  Hunyadi shrugged. ‘We are as ready as the Turks will allow us,’ he said. ‘Believe me, my father knows how hard it is to train for this.’

  Swan raised his glass. ‘God, Saint Steven and Saint George. We need ’em all.’

  The younger Hunyadi stood and drained his wine to the bottom of the cup. ‘Well said.’

  Swan doodled in wine on his wooden table-top. ‘Fifteen Roman miles – perhaps a little more.’

  Hunyadi nodded.

  ‘Current is perhaps two miles an hour now?’ Swan asked. They’d had nine days without rain. They sent for the boatbuilders and the two German ship captains.

  ‘Too early and we arrive in broad daylight
,’ Swan said while the boatmen wrangled. ‘Too late and our gunners can’t see the Turks. But we don’t want to row hard and tire our people.’

  After some argument, they agreed to set forth at noon the next day, and to let their people sleep in.

  Swan found that, for once, he had slept well.

  He rose to a sunny day, already hot. He swam, washed with soap, and dressed in his arming clothes, which were themselves filthy. A few days in a camp without women, and Swan had learned that men could apparently cook well, but could not do laundry, and Clemente shied at the very suggestion. Swan wore his last clean shirt and clean braes, under the assumption that clean cloth carried into a wound was better than dirty. Someone had told him that.

  He thought he was going to die.

  It was difficult for him to explain just how this certainty had come about, but the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that only the ring had kept him alive in his last fights. So he dressed carefully, wrote a will, and sat, wearing his arming clothes, in his open pavilion and penned the longest letter to his lady-love, Signora Sophia, that he had ever written. He sent her one of his Florentine letters of credit and asked her to use it for her dowry in the event of his death. He wrote to her of the battle and the siege, of life in camp – even of the women. He suspected that, had she been there, the life of the women in camp would have interested her more than all the rest. He had a nagging temptation to tell her all about Šárka – a form of confession that he needed, suddenly.

  But, he felt, some forms of truth are best shared in person.

  He sealed the letter with his donat’s ring and gave it, with ten gold ducats, to one of the two Jewish peddlers who had stayed in camp despite Capistrano’s roaring sermons.

  ‘Ibrahim,’ Swan said. ‘I would like you to take this to a certain house in Venice. Here is ten ducats for your trouble, and another ten for your expenses. Surely this is more money than you will make this summer.’

  Ibrahim threw his hands in the air theatrically. ‘Where were you when the good monk bayed for my blood? Then, then I would have liked to be on the road to Venice.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not need to go to Venice. Perhaps for fifty?’

  Swan wanted to get into his armour. He had no zest for the game. But not to play was to court refusal. ‘Twenty,’ he said.

  ‘Forty,’ Ibrahim said. ‘And a horse.’

  ‘A horse will only cause men to notice you,’ Swan said. ‘Thirty and a boat going to Vienna.’

  They shook on it, and Swan paid. ‘I’m sure I’m a fool and you will decamp with my money,’ Swan said with a smile. ‘But if I were you, I would not come back here.’

  Ibrahim nodded. ‘Nor will I. My people say Constantinople is better. But I will try Venice, and perhaps thank you into the bargain.’

  Swan thought of making threats, or promises – but the man didn’t seem the kind. So Swan arranged to buy all his goods, and distributed them among his soldiers. Bigelow and Willoughby helped him move what he had left aboard a Serb riverboat headed north, and the Jew was gone before the crusader fleet was ready to sail.

  Somehow, this relaxed Swan into a simple fatalism. He took his sword to a Romani cutler and had it sharpened the way he liked it – the blade smooth and free of flaws, not really sharper than a butter knife so that it would not stick in bone. He paid, admired the clean, neat work, smiled at Kendal, who was behind him in line, and returned to his tent to get into his harness.

  Then he gathered his company – the whole of the Company of Mary Magdalene – and he formed them in a hollow square. Father Pietro said mass, and when he was done and they had all sung the end of the mass, and the priest said ‘Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen., and added prayers for the dead, then Swan stepped forward.

  ‘By the time the sun sets,’ he said, ‘some of us will be dead. Let’s keep that to a minimum. Let the Turks do the dying. Listen to your officers, obey signals, and use your head. Remember that we fight for all Christendom. If you prefer,’ and he smiled against his own fears, ‘remember how much gold the Turks all seem to wear. You only get to enjoy looting them if we win and you live. When you go up the boarding ladders, go fast – the Turks are deadliest with their bows. Hand to hand we will own them. Now – go quietly to your places. Let’s do this.’

  He thought it was the worst battlefield speech in human history, and in fact, a few of his officers gave him wry looks – Ser Columbino shook his head – but Robert Bigelow grinned at him. ‘Any speech that mentions loot is a good speech,’ he said.

  An hour later, he walked up the steep gangplank to the German ship Hildegardis Bingensis and almost reconsidered his decision to wear his entire harness. But no one was likely to make him row – and he was in the best physical shape of his life from a summer of riding, swimming and rowing.

  And he was afraid. Armour made him feel safer. He had an excellent harness, and only if he fell in and drowned – or lay on a deck until a Turk sat on his chest and probed his visor with a dagger …

  He saw that death too often. It had become his own little nightmare – all his limbs pinned, waiting for the death blow and unable to do anything about it.

  Then he thought of what would happen if he was captured.

  ‘Hunyadi is signalling,’ Will Kendal said. He had elected to stay and fight by Swan, which the English knight appreciated more than he could say. Clemente was there in a brigantine and a small helmet, but Swan set him to carry powder for the big demi-culverin.

  One by one, the boats cast off from the bank and the jury-rigged dock, while two drummers and a fifer played on the banks, a quick tune that had a few of the more nervous souls dancing on the foredeck of Hunyadi’s big German ship. The two ships, which had too few oars to back water long, came last. The formation was acceptable. Hunyadi’s ship fired three handguns. In the bow of the Hildegardis Bingensis the Bohemians answered with three shots, and the whole flotilla moved downstream.

  On the banks, the Serbs and Albanians and stradiotes rode on either bank, a little ahead, clearing away any potential spies. Noon was past – the sun began to go down in the sky. It was hot, but not as bad on the Danube, and the drinking water was at least plentiful. Swan drank vinegar and water as all the Italians did. He watched the banks and the great plain to the west, and tried not to stare to the south, or think of death.

  It was the longest preparation for battle that he could remember. The afternoon seemed many days long – the shadows didn’t seem to lengthen at all, and his hands shook, his side hurt, and a buckle in the back of his right leg began to cut into his circulation.

  He made himself sit under his awning, making his best witty small talk with his officers.

  The next boat to his port side was full of his own Englishmen, and they called back and forth to each other and to Kendal, and Swan smiled as they promised each other fortunes and reminded each other of gambling debts.

  ‘They, at least, are confident of victory,’ Ser Columbino said.

  ‘We ain’t often beat,’ Kendal said.

  Columbino shrugged. ‘The Germans say the same.’

  Kendal smiled his evil smile. ‘Then we should beat the Turks, don’t you think, sir?’

  Finally Swan sent Clemente for his purse, and found a deck of cards. Many of the soldiers had burned theirs after one of Capistrano’s impassioned sermons – but all of them were happy enough to see the capitano produce a deck and begin to play. He and Orietto played piquet – three long hands – and then he played with Kendal, who, after one terrible hand, shook his head.

  ‘Now I’ll have to take the Sultan prisoner just to cover my debt,’ he said.

  Swan looked up from the luckiest hand of cards he’d ever been dealt in all his life. There was cheering, and he could see men on the riverbank to the east.

  Janos Hunyadi had his army drawn up in four ranks of cavalry with some light infantry right against the riverbank – and all of Capistrano’s crusaders arrayed to the west, in a long line sweeping inland.

&nb
sp; The men in the boats cheered back, and then the whole host started downriver together. The men in boats only touched their oars to keep in formation. The men on horseback and even on foot could outdistance them over the newly harvested fields of wheat stubble, now flat, easy going.

  Belgrade showed clearly in the distance.

  And as they crept downstream, the Turkish fleet became visible. The sun was on them, but all the beautiful sails had been taken down, and it was clear that they were all still chained together.

  Two miles away, and they could see that there would be no surprise. Small boats – mere flecks on the sun-dazzled late-afternoon water – ferried janissaries and ghazi – military pilgrims ardent for paradise – out to the ships.

  Hunyadi had the starboard side of the ‘V’. The two German ships lay side by side – so close they had to be fended off from time to time. But he beckoned, and Swan stepped up into the starboard-side shrouds.

  ‘They will be packed with men,’ Hunyadi called.

  Swan shrugged despite his harness. ‘Every cannonball will kill more,’ he said, and men laughed.

  But the Turks laughed too. As the crusader host came downstream, the Turks formed their army along the banks of the Sava and jeered at the oncoming ‘crusaders’. The Turkish host was many times larger – three or perhaps four times, at least – and better armed and armoured by far.

  But – for whatever reason – the Turkish fleet was chained together just upstream of the Sava, from the great island left by the meeting of the Sava and the Danube on the south to the northern bank where they had their redoubt. A small square fortress stood on the island, and its guns doubtless covered the narrow stream that flowed past its southern shores.

  Nonetheless, now that Swan had time to look at it from the river, the Turkish line seemed anything but impregnable. The forts on both ends were exposed – the island could itself be flanked, and even as Swan watched, the Hungarian army and the crusaders moved more quickly along the Danube. Hunyadi’s hand gunners began a skirmishing fire against the fort on the island. The range was too long for them to be particularly effective – more than two hundred paces – but before the Christian fleet was in range, Hunyadi had a pair of falcons unhitched from their oxen, dragged across the wheat fields by willing crusaders, and emplaced behind hasty gabions of wicker and earth.