Cameron Christian

Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople

Tom Swan and the Head of St George

Part Three: Constantinople

Christian Cameron

Foreword

There’s something very . . . historical, about writing an historical serial for e-publication. If it’s been done recently, I haven’t heard about it, and yet it has impeccable historical credentials – before we had the epub, we had the magazine, and in that format Dumas did it, and Conan Doyle, and a host of other authors with magnificent credentials; Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, and Charles Dickens.

It’s a fine format. Instead of a single pulse of seven hundred manuscript pages, the author can write in blocks with independent storylines that may still have an arc and a complex interweb of characters and motivations. I was resistant – but not for long.

So here is Tom Swan, my first serial character. Tom is firmly based in history; Italy was full of itinerant Englishmen, especially soldiers, throughout the period, and so was Greece. I confess that the man who forms the basis for the character was not English but Italian – Cyriac of Ancona, sometimes known as the ‘Grandfather of Archaeology,’ who roved the Levant in search of antiquities and manuscripts that he could beg, borrow or steal for the Pope and other rich clients in their burning zeal to rediscover the ancient world. Ancient manuscripts were then, and remain, incredibly valuable; recent re-discovery of a complete text of Archimedes in a palimpsest shows that such manuscripts are still out there, and give us an idea of the kind of treasures for which Tom Swan – and Cyriac of Ancona – searched.

If this serial has some success, I’ll write more – the format, as I say, is fun, and allows me to explore some nooks and crannies of history – and even some characters that I’d love to take to greater depth; Philokles, in the Tyrant series; Archilogos (Arimnestos’s Ionian adversary) in the Long War series; Geoffrey de Charny in the late Middle Ages – the list goes on and on. And I’ll add pieces rapidly – perhaps even one a month.

Readers of my other books are aware that I’m a passionate re-enactor and also a military veteran, and that these experiences inform my writing. Those who are new to me deserve the following reassurance – I’ve worn the clothes and armour, and shot the bows, and rowed, and even ridden some of the horses. In the process of working as an intelligence professional, I met people who exercise real power every day, and I got an idea of how they work – and how history works. But I don’t do this in a vacuum and I receive an amazing level of support from friends, fellow re-enactors, veterans, academics crafts people and artists. In those last categories, I’d like to thank Dario Wielec, who drew the illustrations; he has a passion for historical detail that delights me every time I see his drawings, from any period, and you can see more of his stuff at http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.ca/. Finally, the ‘covers’ for the Tom Swan series are provided by Albion Swords, who are, to me, the premier manufacturers of accurate replica swords in North America. I use their products every day. How many people can say that – about swords?

Chris Cameron

Toronto, June 2012

Tom Swan – Part Three: Constantinople

Swan had the worst headache of his life. In fact, he found it hard to think, difficult to concentrate, almost impossible to understand what the people around him were saying.

After a long time, he decided that he couldn’t understand them because he didn’t know the language they were speaking.

After more time, he decided that they were speaking Turkish. But that made no sense, as they often used words he knew.

How did I get here? he wondered. He was lying on a divan or a couch of some sort, at the edge of a bare-earth courtyard – like the receiving entrance of a great house. He lay there, watching, while a train of donkeys arrived with baskets of fruit, and then he went to sleep.

Once awake, he realised that he was lying in the servant’s yard of a house. A house in Constantinople.

What happened?

He couldn’t seem to remember. He had gone riding with Idris. Met the man’s sister.

After that – nothing.

Damn.

He went to sleep again.

He woke again, and it was dark. Oil lamps lit a bare room, painted white, with the edges of the walls decorated in bright stucco. There were a dozen people eating on cushions at a low central table.

‘He’s awake!’ said a child’s voice.

He looked at the foot of his couch, and saw a small black boy. He smiled – he couldn’t help himself, the boy was so small and imp-like. The boy smiled back.

A tall African man rose from the table. He approached, and knelt by Swan’s low bed. ‘Can you understand me?’ he asked, in slow Italian.

Swan nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The African smiled, and the smile lit his face like an internal lamp. ‘Good! I feared that I hit you too hard.’

Swan remembered the man – something about a message.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

The African smiled. ‘Nowhere you need to remember,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’

Swan swung his feet to the floor, sat up, and groaned as the blood hit his head. ‘Argh,’ he moaned.

The African snapped his fingers and a veiled woman brought him a tall pottery cup.

‘Drink this,’ he said.

Swan drank.

The drink had the same bitter salty taste as the stuff they’d drunk during the hawking – suddenly he remembered it all. Hawking, Khatun Bengül, the note.

He met the African’s eyes, just as he realised who the man was.

As the drink hit him.

‘Sweet dreams, Englishman,’ said the African. ‘We will not meet again.’

When he came to, he was hot – boiling hot. His skin seemed to give off steam. He had oil on his skin – he could feel it. He smelled odd.

His head was exceptionally clear. There was pain, in his left temple, but mostly this wonderful clarity. The room he was in was dark, perfumed, and a single lamp glowed on a table. It lit magnificent wall hangings full of patterns in which his eyes lost themselves, and a silver lamp that hung, unlit, a ball of reflected sparkles, and in his clarity of sight, those reflections spoke to him of the infinity of spheres that Aristotle said made up the universe.

A shadowy figure passed through a curtain at the darker end of the room and vanished. He heard a murmur of sound. Turkish, certainly.

A new, taller figure entered through the curtain. Walked to the edge of the bed, and sat gracefully beside him.

Her hand touched his shoulder, and ran down his side, to his thigh, and down his thigh between his legs.

‘Hmm,’ Auntie said. She stood and wriggled, and then she was naked, except for a chain around her waist and bangles at one wrist and one ankle. ‘I wish we had a language in common, Englishman,’ she said in Arabic. Her left hand ran expertly up between his legs.

She laughed. ‘Never mind,’ she said and knelt on the bed. She leaned over and her breasts touched his chest. Her perfumed hair fell all around him.

He moaned.

She laughed, and kissed him. A little too hard, and a little too fast. It was as if he was delicate.

Somewhere close, a woman shouted. Another screamed.

Auntie paused. One finger flicked the head of his penis. In Arabic, she said, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ She laughed and slipped off the bed.

Swan, even deep in the throes of lust, noticed that she had a dagger in her hand.

Everything seemed to be happening very slowly. For the first time, it occurred to him that he’d been drugged.

Auntie was magnificent, naked, in the light of a single lamp wick, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. She curved, and curved.

There was a sound of running feet.

Auntie said something softly. Swan would have sworn she said ‘Shit’, in some language or other. She picked her long shawl off the floor and slipped it around her body.

Swan tried to prop himself on his elbow, but he didn’t seem to be in full control of his body. One part of him was working very well – rather embarrassingly well. The rest – refused their duty.

She slipped out through the curtain.

Another scream, and the unmistakable sound of one blade on another.

He tried to get to his feet, and failed. His erection was comic, and he giggled and fell back on the bed. The colours of the wall hangings were deep and vibrant, more like sounds than colours.

Drugged.

He couldn’t stop giggling.

A figure appeared at the curtain. More running feet, and more blades.

A second figure appeared.

‘My poor dear,’ whispered Khatun Bengül, in Italian. And then, ‘My. My, my.’ And a giggle.

Well-muscled arms lifted him. He couldn’t have resisted if he’d wished to.

He was wrapped in a sheet, and thrown over a man’s shoulders. He had the wind knocked out of him.

He could only see the floor.

Through the curtain to a vestibule. Magnificent with gold writing – Persian. There was a corpse, face down, on the tiled floor.

Stairs.

A pool of blood, and blood running down the steps like some sort of ghastly waterfall. At the top of the steps, behind them, lay the African, dead, his head half severed by a scimitar.

And the blood ran on and on, over the tiled floor., down the steps like some ghastly waterfall. Beautiful, in a way.

Good Christ.

The man carrying him ran down the steps and into another hall, and then ran as hard as a man can run while carrying another man.

It was like a nightmare, except that Swan was never afraid. They crossed a courtyard – arched, colonnaded, and magnificent with glazed tiles and fine hangings. Even in his dream state, Swan realised he’d been there before. With horses.

Up. A flight of steps, and there were lights appearing all along the top of the colonnade opposite.

‘Faster!’ said Khatun Bengül.

And then they went through a door, into a blaze of light.

Through a set of beads, and another, and past a great set of double doors of cedar inset with ivory and silver, and then he was unceremoniously lowered into a great trunk, also of cedar. He hit his head, and admired the shooting stars that whirled around him.

Khatun Bengül’s head appeared, framed in the light. ‘My poor Frank,’ she said. Her eyes shifted away. And back. A certain light came into her eyes, and she leaned down and put her lips on his.

He responded instantly. His face rose to hers. The tip of her tongue caressed his, and then she was gone.

Someone slammed the lid of the trunk shut, and he was alone in the darkness.

The extreme alertness didn’t fade, and he heard a male voice – raised in anger, but some rooms away. Perhaps out in the central courtyard. And then another, and a woman’s, shrill as a fishwife’s. All in Turkish.

Then the sound of a man’s hand knocking at the outer door.

‘Khatun Bengül!’ he cried. ‘Khatun Bengül!’ and then a long, calm string of words in Turkish.

He heard her, even across several rooms, go barefoot to the door of her apartments and open it.

Turahanoglu Omar Reis. Even full of whatever he’d been given, he knew that voice.

Khatun Bengül’s father.

Idris’s father.

What am I doing here? Swan thought.

Auntie must be his sister, he thought, his first piece of deductive reasoning in many hours. Things fell into place.

His fearless lassitude fell away, and he was suddenly and completely terrified.

Omar Reis spoke to his daughter for a long time.

A need to piss began to creep into Swan’s hierarchy of needs. And his posture, folded in the trunk, was growing painful. His lower legs were bent back under him. His knees burned.

She said something imperious. Swan had been an adolescent – he knew that tone. She said something like Fine! Do whatever you want.

More footsteps. Male. And many of them.

After a while, he decided that soldiers or servants were searching the place.

‘How dare you! Not in my room!’ she said, with all the drama of the young, in Arabic.

The cedar doors crashed open.

I’m going to die naked, in a fancy trunk, with a raging hard-on. Swan couldn’t decide whether to be more terrified or to laugh aloud.

Drugged. For sure.

Drawers were opened.

A trunk was opened. Then another.

Then a new voice – calm, level, and wheedling.

Idris.

Then Khatun Bengül – a shriek of adolescent righteousness that crossed language and cultural barriers.

In a blaze of light, his trunk was opened.

A crack.

Swan’s fear made him virtually unable to breathe.

Someone’s hand held the trunk open just a little. Idris’s voice – quite close. All Turkish. Swan had no idea what Idris was saying.

He lay there, waiting for the trunk to be opened farther. The top was ajar about the breadth of a man’s fingers.

Khatun Bengül was weeping. She said – something – through her tears.

Idris sounded agitated now.

The fingers inside the trunk lid were those of a middle-aged man – the nails were clean, but there were scars across all four, and a great ring of silver, gold and a blood-red stone engraved – beautifully engraved – with a running horse. In Greek, the letters by the horse said ‘Eupatridae’. The well-born. The jewel of some Ancient Greek aristocrat, two thousand years ago. On the finger of a Turkish warlord. It had to be Omar Reis’s hand.

Swan had time to read the stone, admire its age, and say three Ave Marias.

The trunk slammed shut. He heard Khatun Bengül’s sobs, and her brother’s gentle remonstrances, and then – silence.

Time passed.

His cramps grew greater than his fear, and then his need to piss grew greater than either.

Time passed without a rush of feet, or the blaze of light that would herald his death.

The last footsteps died away – there were no more shouts from the courtyard.

The trunk lid was thrown back, and Khatun Bengül leaned in. ‘My poor Englishman,’ she said. She extended him a slim hand, and he took it, and to his immense mortification, he couldn’t rise out of the box. His feet and lower legs were pinned under him, and there was no feeling in them at all.

‘You must come,’ she said.

He raised himself on his arms, and she pulled on his legs until they came free. He couldn’t feel them at all – it was the oddest, and in some ways the most terrifying, feeling. He couldn’t stand. She couldn’t carry him.

‘You must do better! If my father finds you here, he will have to kill you.’

Swan looked at her for a moment. ‘My lady,’ he said in Arabic, ‘you brought me here.’

She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘So?’

‘I was in no – ahem – danger. Where I was.’ His Arabic wasn’t well suited to the situation. He didn’t know any words to convey anything salacious.

‘Auntie intended to fuck you and then sell you to the Armenians,’ Khatun Bengül said, matter-of-factly, in prim Italian. ‘I assumed you would prefer to remain free and alive.’ She smiled, utterly desirable. ‘Perhaps Auntie’s body is worth your life?’

His legs were beginning to tingle.

‘I can’t move until I get feeling back in my legs,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ she said. She looked him over. ‘Are you always so . . . solid?’ she asked with a giggle.

‘I’ve been drugged,’ he said. He was finding it difficult to sound dashing, romantic, or even clever.

‘I wonder what she gave you?’ Khatun Bengül said. ‘She must have been very . . . exciting.’

His feet were tingling, and his upper legs were hurting. A great deal.

He gritted his teeth. ‘You are far more beautiful than your auntie,’ he said. Time to take the offensive.

‘Bah – you just say that. You would have rutted with her like a dog. Why did I even save you?’ she said. She leaned over him. ‘Are you going to be sick?’

He shook his head. ‘Have you ever gone to sleep on your arm?’

She laughed. ‘I see. So you are in pain.’

‘Yes,’ he said, somewhat tartly.

‘I wish I might discover what drug my auntie used,’ she said. Indeed, his tumescence hadn’t reduced – not from pain, nor time. She sat next to him on the edge of the trunk. ‘How much longer, do you think? Before you can walk?’

He could barely speak. ‘Soon,’ he said, in Arabic.

‘Does it hurt very much?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

She leaned over and brushed her lips against his.

It was remarkable how instantly his concern for his legs and the pain there receded.

Her left hand went around his neck and stroked down – shoulder blade, spine – one nail just scratching along the lines and troughs of his muscles.

Her tongue brushed his.

Her right hand . . .

Voices in the courtyard. She stood up and pulled him to his feet. Flowers of pain blossomed at his ankles and ran down – and up – and he stumbled and fell, despite her grip on him.

But he got a foot under himself. Pushed to his feet.

Grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her. He put his right hand on her left breast, through her robe felt the nipple, and she moaned.

‘Khatun Bengül?’ called a voice in the courtyard. She stiffened.

‘Don’t forget me,’ Swan said. He tried to find something from the Greek poets – something to say – but his brain was on fire with lust and his legs were afire with pain.

‘Khatun Bengül?’ came Omar Reis’s voice.

‘We’re dead,’ Khatun Bengül said. She was clearly shocked to her core. ‘It should be my brother out there.’

‘Window?’ Swan asked.

‘There are no windows in a virgin’s rooms – none that face out.’ She reached for him. ‘We are going to die.’

Swan had the oddest feeling – that this had happened before. Perhaps it had.

Of course, it might be that a doting father would kill only the lover – the foreign lover.

Whose death would nicely suit the political situation, discrediting the embassy.

Christ, I’ve been had at every level. Auntie wasn’t going to sell me to the Armenians. Auntie was going to play the outraged sister and pass me to the Wolf of Thrace.

‘Windows into the yard?’ he asked.

She pointed mutely at the ornate curtained frame visible through her chamber door. It let directly on to the courtyard. He went to it as swiftly as his feet allowed and peered through the curtain. He could see Idris, six feet away, with a sword, and a trio of Turks – hard men with lined faces and curved swords.

‘Khatun Bengül? I’m coming in,’ her father said. ‘My sister is very angry.’

Khatun Bengül was petrified. She wasn’t playacting. She was literally unable to move. ‘I’ll be stoned to death,’ she sobbed. ‘I never thought father would come back. He said . . .’

He looked around. She had her own apartment with her own slaves and servants – six rooms, all of which opened off a single door to the second-floor balconies that lined the arched colonnades of the courtyard. Bedroom, sitting room, clothes room – he was stumbling from room to room, now – slaves, pretending to be asleep, a small workroom with steps going down.

‘That’s the first place they’ll look!’ she cried. ‘The kitchen!’

‘Go and talk to your father,’ he said. He put an arm around her waist and kissed her. ‘We won’t die.’ He let go, and ran down the steps, his unwanted erection bouncing along like an extra limb.

The outer door of the apartment opened. ‘Khatun Bengül!’ roared Omar Reis.

Swan came to the bottom of the steps. There wasn’t even a separate window to the courtyard. He’d have taken his chances with that – but he was in a stone chamber lined with shelves. A pantry.

There were two curtained doorways.

‘If he’s here, he’s a dead man,’ Omar Reis said. ‘Auntie says you have polluted yourself.’

There was something in Omar Reis’s manner – even through his terror, Swan realised that the Turk knew. He knew – everything.

I’ve been had.

Curiously, the knowledge that the Turkish lord had set him up – probably set him up to be caught with the auntie – wheels within wheels – stiffened his spine. He grew calm.

If I get through this alive, I’m going to get that bastard.

He heard the sound of soft Turkish boots on the stone steps.

Two doors.

He slipped through the nearest.

It was dark. He tried to feel his way – silently – around, hoping against hope that there was a trunk, a barrel, anything to give him a chance. He began to consider fighting.

Naked, against a professional.

He stubbed his toe. Hard.

Fell against cool stone, and smelled . . .

Water.

A well cover.

Open. Why not? It was indoors.

Turkish voices. Ten feet away. Two of them.

He jumped into the well.

If you ever want to understand the true meaning of fear, jump into a deep hole in total darkness and test your feelings as you fall.

Swan fell.

His right shoulder impacted heavily on something that hurt him, and then he was in water – deep, cold water. He struck it badly, and it knocked the wind out of him, and he went too deep, sputtering. It was all he could do not to breathe.

He didn’t know which way the surface was. He didn’t know if he had enough air in his lungs to allow him to float.

He was losing it.

A great bubble escaped him – a gob of air lost. It rippled past his face . . .

I’m upside down. Bubbles rise.

He reversed himself, let out another tiny bubble of air, and swam – a panicked, wild, thrashing swim.

But his head broke the surface.

And smacked into something stone, in pitch darkness.

He took three breaths. Then he had to swim, and his fingers hit stone over his head. When he tried a shallower stroke, he hit his head again.

It finally came through.

I’m going to die here. I’m in a well.

He took another breath, and reached up. He ran his fingers across the stone, using his buoyancy to press him against the ceiling. I fell from somewhere, damn it. Somewhere within a few feet was an opening.

He scraped an elbow, bumped his shoulder, and the feeling of the air on his face changed.

His head bobbed free.

There was something under his left hand, and he held it – an edge. For a very long time, he simply clung to the edge, resting. Breathing.

It was a ledge. It was quite wide, and under only a few inches of water.

He reached up as far as he could reach, and there was no ceiling.

He got a knee up on the ledge. It seemed the hardest thing he’d ever done.

He half lay on the underwater ledge for many, many breaths.

Then he got the other leg up. He knelt.

The drug had finally worn off, he was pleased to note.

He crouched on the ledge. He wasn’t dead, but that was about all he could say. He was now bitterly cold and very tired. It was completely dark. Utterly dark.

How, exactly, do I get myself into these things?

He began to explore, cautiously. His rational mind said that he would be weaker later.

His questing arms found a column. He put his back against it and stood cautiously, waiting for the feeling of stone against his head all the way, but when he was standing tall, he felt as if there was still a great deal of space above him.

There was another ledge above the one he was on. It was six feet above him, and he only found it because his hands were feeling for the ceiling. He got his fingers over the edge, and then his hands, and then his arms.

He didn’t make a conscious decision. He jumped, pushed with his arms, and he was lying on cool, dry stone. He instantly revised his chances of survival. This was . . . intentional. This shelf – it was like . . .

A path.

He crawled six feet and felt the drop just in time. The shelf ended abruptly. It fell away to the water.

Swan knew that, at this point, if he went back to the water, he’d die. He was just barely managing to keep the panic in check, but under the clarity of his thinking was an abyss of pain and fear. He was close to losing it. The thought I’m going to die alone in the dark was fully formed and very close.

He turned, with infinite patience, and crawled very slowly back the way he’d come. He knew he was on ‘new ground’ when he came to rock with no water on it. He crawled.

And crawled.

After ten minutes, he knew that he was going – somewhere.

Further, it occurred to him that the air was fresh.

I’m not in a well, he thought. Or rather, hoped.

At the next column, he pulled himself into a crouch, and then sat with his back against the pillar. After a while, his back warmed the pillar. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

He tried to think of Khatun Bengül’s body. Of her lips. Or Violante’s or Tilda’s.

But the darkness was all around him, and he was cold, and it is very hard to be brave in the dark, alone, when you are cold and wet.

But he must have slept.

Because he woke.

And there was . . . light.

Not much light. But after hours of complete darkness, it might have been direct sunlight.

He wasn’t in a well – he was in some sort of underground canal. The canal had a ledge underwater – probably for workmen to stand on while they cleared obstructions and pollutions. Above that was a walkway, on which he’d crawled. He looked back. He could see the end, about forty feet behind him.

He’d crawled forty feet.

He sighed.

He looked down into the water. It was only about six feet deep.

It had a current.

And a few yards away, it flowed out from under an arch. So he’d . . . swum? Been floated? Under that arch.

Somewhere, there would be an entrance. If workmen came here . . .

He got to his feet. His arms were covered in bruises, and he had tender places on his head. His hands looked as if he’d been in a fight.

He started walking.

After what had to have been a mile – an incredible distance underground – there were steps, and then . . .

The tunnel split. The water came down a small waterfall – he flashed on the blood running down the steps, and suddenly he thought, Why did Khatun Bengül kill to get me?

None of it made any sense.

Or rather, it all made a scary kind of sense. Like the sorts of dramas that had played out at England’s royal court.

He turned right, because he had a feeling about how the canal ran. He’d read his classics. The water must come from an aqueduct. That meant – since water flowed downhill – that he was now going east, towards the Venetian quarter.

He had begun to look at every light-hole. They were evenly spaced, for the most part – twenty feet or more over his head. As he walked, he began to make a plan. After a while, he laughed aloud, because if he was planning, then his brain was working, and he didn’t think he was going to die, which was funny, because he was still alone and naked and cold.

But an hour later, he climbed through a set of obstructions into brighter light. He could see people – he’d been hearing them for half an hour. The sides of the cistern had long since collapsed, and become a public fountain, and on one side, a pair of small boys bathed while on the other, their mothers filled jars.

They were Greek women. He could hear them speaking Greek.

He moved carefully behind a pillar.

‘Despoina,’ he called out. ‘I need help, in the name of Christ.’

The two women drawing water startled like deer. They both looked around.

‘I’ve escaped from the Turk. I’m naked, and I need clothes. I promise I can pay. Please help me,’ he said in what he hoped was his most complacent and charming Greek.

The nearer of the two women made a motion with her hand to the other.

‘Show yourself, heretic,’ she said.

He called out, ‘I’m naked.’

‘All the better,’ she said, drawing a knife from her gown. ‘Let me see you,’ she ordered.

Swan emerged from the columns.

She laughed. ‘A Frank! Truly, you are not lying.’ She spat. ‘Why should I save you? You Franks are worse than the Turks.’

‘Money? Save me, and I will pay.’ Swan backed away.

She looked around. ‘Truly? You will pay? So will the Turks, I would guess. Eh?’ she asked, and waved the knife at him.

The other woman laughed. ‘He is young, and handsome.’ She made an obscene gesture. ‘And naked.’

Half an hour later, he was at the gates of the Venetian quarter, dressed as a Greek woman. Silently, head averted, he handed a folded note to the janissary, who passed it in to the Venetian guard.

Alessandro appeared. ‘I’ll answer for this woman,’ he said coolly.

The janissary saluted and smirked, and Swan followed his capitano.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alessandro said.

‘I was set up. I survived.’ He shook his head. ‘I escaped.’

‘How do you come to be dressed . . . like a woman? Like a Greek woman?’ Alessandro asked.

‘It’s complicated,’ Swan said.

Alessandro stopped and shocked him by embracing him. ‘Well done,’ he said.

‘What – well done for not getting killed?’ Swan asked.

‘Given the way things are going, not getting killed gets a pass,’ Alessandro said.

After a lot of sleep, he sat with a cup of wine in Alessandro’s room. ‘This is how I see it,’ he said. ‘Omar Reis planned to use me. His sister planned to use me and sell me, but Omar Reis always intended to make an unpleasant incident of the whole thing. And kill me.’

Alessandro fingered his beard.

‘Had I been caught – red handed, so to speak—’

‘The Sultan might have refused the embassy, or merely used it as a pretext to keep us waiting.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘As if he needs a pretext.’ The Venetian leaned forward. ‘I should send you across to Galata before the Turks send for you.’

Swan looked out into the sunlight. Warm and dry, with wine in him, the whole thing was beginning to seem more like an adventure. ‘I don’t think Omar Reis can admit I was in his house.’

‘He must know. He knows you weren’t here. His janissaries must tell him of every movement here.’

‘Yes – but can he admit that I penetrated his sanctum,’ Swan enjoyed his double entendre, ‘and lived to tell of it?’

Alessandro fingered his beard.

‘What if I never returned?’ Swan asked.

‘What?’ Alessandro said.

‘All the janissary knows is that you brought in a Greek whore.’ Swan finished his wine. ‘I think I’ve thought this through. Give me Peter and some money. I’m going to disappear. And I’m going to get the cardinal’s library out of his house, and maybe some other things.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I may even manage to get these things shipped over to Galata.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘You think you can use the sewers to get into his house.’

Swan was crestfallen that the Venetian saw so quickly through his plan. ‘Yes.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘This is an excellent plan,’ he said. ‘Let me give you a word of advice.’

Swan nodded.

‘Do not – I beg leave to repeat myself – do not seek to avenge yourself on Omar Reis.’ Alessandro rose and poured more wine. ‘We have our date. The Sultan will receive the papal ambassador in three days’ time. We are to leave the city immediately after.’ Alessandro handed him wine. ‘Whatever you do, you must be back in three days. And no revenge. Understood?’

Swan nodded. ‘Of course not. That would be stupid.’

An hour later, he had exchanged notes with Simon. Several hours later, a Greek wine merchant came into the Venetian quarter, and sold Candian wine to the Venetians by the hogshead from two wagons. A servant jumped down from the rear wagon and found Alessandro, and gave him a package.

Alessandro handed it over to Swan. It contained a set of directions and a full set of clothes – ragged, Greek clothes. Swan shook his head. ‘When do I get to dress well?’ he asked, and became a ragged Greek veteran, a penniless beggar. Peter became another such.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Your whole plan depends on this Jew.’

‘Yes and no,’ Swan said. ‘I have something for him, as well.’ Then he and Peter went into the shadow of the gate.

Together, they waited their moment, and while the Greek wine merchant’s wagons stopped by the janissary, they slipped out.

The two of them moved carefully. Peter was too tall to avoid notice, but Swan needed him.

He almost laughed aloud when a pair of Greeks stopped and gave them alms.

‘At least you fought,’ said the elder. He clasped Peter’s hand.

‘He’s lost his voice,’ Swan said. ‘We fought, and we’ll keep fighting.’

The two men looked both pleased – and guilty. They handed over more coins and walked away quickly.

Peter shook his head. ‘They’re afraid,’ he said, in French.

Swan followed the route as laid down by Simon. He assumed that Simon was having them watched, checking to see that they were alone. He hoped so.

After walking over half the city, they came down Third Hill on a steep street. As they descended, a heavy grain wagon pulled across the narrow street. A pair of men jumped down.

They had crossbows.

‘Get on,’ said the one who looked as if someone had burned his face off.

The second man stood well clear of them. A small boy in the back of the wagon lifted the edge of a tarpaulin and they slipped in under the load of hay. It was stifling hot, and Swan immediately had to sneeze.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Peter.

The wagon rattled and clanked over the streets. It had no suspension, and Swan’s head cracked against the bottom several times before he found a better way to lie. He sneezed and sneezed, and one of the guards ordered him to be quiet.

Peter put a linen coif – none too clean – over his mouth. ‘We’re passing a guard post,’ he hissed.

Swan managed to keep his sneezes to himself for a hundred long heartbeats, and then the wagon was moving again.

Moments later, the top was stripped back, and Simon was standing with six armed men.

‘What have you done?’ he asked. But he seemed more amused than anything. ‘You promised me a secret and a profit in your note,’ he said.

Swan sneezed.

Later, dressed in an ornate robe and curly slippers, Swan leaned back on comfortable cushions.

‘So you are an agent of the cardinal,’ Simon said.

‘Perhaps,’ Swan said. ‘My only orders are to retrieve his library. Can you help me?’

Simon rocked his head from side to side. ‘Perhaps. It is risky. Everything is watched right now. You know that a great many of the Christian relics have gone missing – from Hagia Sophia, from the monasteries, from private houses. The Sultan is furious.’

‘None of my concern. I’m here for books. When I’m done, you may have the house,’ Swan said.

Simon made a face. ‘Is it yours to give?’

‘Of course,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll have your brother send you a deed.’ He shrugged. ‘A palace near the Hippodrome for some information and a little smuggling . . .’

Simon lay back and drank quaveh.

‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘I get you to the house from the Venetian quarter. You go inside and prepare the items you want to ship. I ship them to Galata for you, and I keep the cardinal’s house.’

Swan nodded.

It was an excellent plan, and the only hitch he could see was that Simon planned to sell him out. He could see it on the man’s face. Damn it.

Why are people so greedy?

‘How long will you be?’ Simon asked.

‘At least a week,’ Swan answered, an utter lie. In his head, he’d already discarded Simon.

‘That long?’ Simon said. ‘Why?’

‘It will take me that long to figure out what to take and what to leave,’ Swan said, embroidering as he went. ‘I’ll contact you when we’re ready. You get us from the Venetian quarter to the cardinal’s house. I’ll take care of the rest.’ In fact, in his head, he was already moving on to his next plan, but he needed to part amicably from this man before he chose to betray Swan immediately.

He and Peter said their goodbyes, and slipped out of the Jewish quarter at the guard change. They were followed.

‘He’s going to sell us,’ Swan said.

Peter sighed. ‘I wondered.’

‘We have to disappear. Luckily, we can.’ Swan took a deep breath. ‘Let’s buy food.’

They walked back towards the Venetian quarter. Swan’s fear at every corner was that the two men following them – Simon’s men – would sell them to the Turks on the spot, but they made it to the market, and purchased meat pies. And then they cut across the ruins of the old Forum – down the steep sides of the collapsed fountain, and into the sewers. No one following them had had a sightline. Or so Swan had to hope.

An hour later, they were in the underground cisterns, eating meat pies made of the same parts of the cow and the pig that were used in meat pies in London. There was more pepper, but the taste was strangely familiar.

Peter looked at the apparently endless arches receding into the distance. ‘This was built – by men?’

Swan slapped him on the back. ‘I’m glad you like it. We’ll be down here for a long time.’

As it proved, it took them two days and a night to find Bessarion’s house and explore the system. They were involved in necessary adventures, including the theft of a ladder from a monastery and carrying it underground and above ground for almost a mile; another theft of rope, and a tedious amount of sneaking through alleys, dropping coloured cloth through the gratings and then hurrying below to see where, exactly, they were.

Once, Swan had to hope his Greek was sufficient, and went above to purchase supplies. He walked carefully, watched carefully, and dealt with the deafest old woman he could find in the main market by the Hippodrome.

When they were sure – reasonably sure – that they had the right well, Swan lay on the walkway, on a stolen blanket, and drew a map of every part of the sewers and cisterns as he knew them. As far as he could see, the canals were underground cisterns carrying water from the aqueducts to supply the Hippodrome and the palace quarter and any houses lucky enough to be along the major water routes. Great houses simply had a well cover that opened into a shaft that ran down into the cistern. Some houses had private cisterns – and there was more than one cistern system, and they didn’t all link up. Or rather, in the time he had, Swan couldn’t see where they linked, and he and Peter often had to cross an alley or a small hill above ground, carrying all their tools, stumbling, lost in a darkened city.

The main canals, or cisterns, had iron rings every so often, and nautical bollards at intersections, clearly for tying small boats against the current. Swan couldn’t discern whether there were still maintenance crews working. As far as he could see, the newest stonework was two hundred years old or older, and there were four major cave-ins unrepaired.

‘We need a boat,’ he said, as he sketched his map.

Peter shook his head. ‘People built this?’ he said again. He found wonder in everything – the grafitti, the underground mosaics, the bronze fittings where no one could see them. ‘No one is this rich.’

‘The old Romans were this rich,’ Swan said.

‘Imagine fresh water in every house,’ Peter said.

‘We need a boat,’ Swan insisted.

‘I’ll just steal one on the waterfront and carry it through the streets, shall I?’ Peter asked.

Swan stopped drawing, the charcoal pinched in his fingers. ‘Mary and Joseph,’ he said. ‘There must be a water gate.’

Peter’s head came up. He grinned.

‘I know who can get us a boat,’ Swan said. ‘Let’s cast east.’

It took the rest of the day, but they found that the eastern branch of the sewer did indeed run down all the way to the sea. It ended at a grate like a portcullis, strong iron carefully wrought. The water ran out into the sea.

Swan’s legs hurt from climbing and crawling, but he looked at the sea with infinite satisfaction. ‘Thalatta, Thalatta,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Peter asked.

‘That’s our way out, my friend.’ Swan watched for a while, and began to search around the water gate for signs of use.

There were several.

Very cautiously indeed, he pushed against the great iron gate.

He found scratches on the floor that proved it had been opened. Repeatedly, and recently.

He climbed up the rough stone inside the gate, and near the top he found the simple bolt that held it fast. He released it, felt the heavy iron start to swing, and shoved it back with his shoulder, almost losing his grip. He put the bolt back and dropped to the walkway.

‘We can open it whenever we want from inside,’ he said. He pointed out the headland opposite. ‘We’re south of Galata. Look at the current.’

Peter nodded.

‘Our galley can drop down on the tide – and pass within a stone’s throw of right here.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Nightfall or daybreak would be best.’

Peter rubbed his beard. ‘It would be all or nothing,’ he said. ‘If the galley misses the boat—’

‘The boat is swept away on the current never to be seen again.’ Swan grinned.

Peter shook his head. ‘I pity the poor bastards in the boat.’

‘Save your pity,’ Swan said. ‘You’ll be with them.’

That evening, they climbed the ladder up the well-shaft into what they believed to be Cardinal Bessarion’s Constantinople house. Despite his meticulous scouting, Swan’s heart beat like an armourer’s hammer smoothing metal as he climbed the ladder as far as it would go. Then he threw the rope with a grapnel. It went up, and then it came down, and nearly hit him on the head.

‘Damn,’ Swan said.

Peter nodded. ‘I’ll just climb down and wait for you to do this on your own,’ he said.

Swan waited for the archer to climb down. Then he tossed the grapnel as high as he dared, and covered his head.

Nothing happened.

Head still covered, he tugged the rope.

It seemed to have caught.

Suddenly his whole plan for climbing out of the well seemed very, very foolish.

He climbed the rope anyway. He tied a second rope to the ladder, hoping it would break his fall.

And then he was in. He could smell old incense, and there was enough light in the sky to see that he was in a kitchen, and that someone had opened the grain pithoi set into the floor.

Enough light to see the row of palettes where people slept. Kitchen slaves, perhaps.

And enough light to see the sword, held at eye height, pointed at his face.

On the positive side, it was a European sword, and the man behind it looked Greek.

It’s not always easy to take note of a man’s appearance when he’s looking at you over a sword, but the Greek was very handsome, with a small pointed beard and moustache, excellent skin and a strong chin. He was heavily muscled, like an athlete or a rower.

‘I’m from Cardinal Bessarion,’ Swan said.

The young man – he was no older than Swan – breathed out. ‘Christos Anesti,’ he said. ‘Christ is Risen.’ He looked at Swan. ‘We’ve been waiting.’

Swan lost a few hundred heartbeats when he saw how precariously his grapnel had grabbed the very edge of the well cover. He vowed never, ever to do such a foolish thing again.

Peter came up the rope.

The young man’s name was Apollinaris. He spoke perfect Italian. ‘I work for the cardinal,’ he said proudly.

‘Are you his steward?’ Swan asked.

‘I’m a philosopher,’ the young man said. ‘Sometimes an actor.’ He frowned. ‘Sometimes I steal secrets. And I’m an astrologer. And a hermeticist.’

Swan looked the young man over. ‘Are you alone here?’

‘No,’ Apollinaris said. ‘My whole troupe is here.’

‘Troupe?’ Swan felt as if he was missing something.

‘We’re mimes. We perform mimes, and ancient plays.’ Apollinaris shook his head. ‘You are a barbarian, I see.’

Peter’s head emerged from the well.

‘This is Peter – my . . . friend. Peter, this young man is Apollinaris. He says he is . . .’ Swan hesitated. ‘A philosopher. And the leader of a troupe of actors.’

‘Good Christ,’ Peter said.

‘I’m not the leader,’ Apollinaris said. ‘Nikephorus is the leader.’

‘I see,’ Swan said. The young man was on edge, and Swan had the oddest feeling that the young man was an escaped lunatic. He seemed to bounce slightly on the balls of his feet, as if overfilled with spirit.

Apollinaris leaned over the well. ‘Did you really come from the sewers? I always meant to explore them.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Am I right in assuming you need to get – er – out of Constantinople?’ he asked.

Apollinaris nodded. ‘Cardinal Bessarion sent a coded message and said he was sending someone to pick us up,’ he said. He sagged. ‘But that was months ago.’

Swan delivered a long string of obscenities. Peter arched an eyebrow.

‘Of course he didn’t tell us. What else could His Eminence do? What you don’t know, you can’t reveal.’ The Fleming sounded vaguely envious.

‘Books, he said. Relics. The head of Saint George.’ Swan all but spat. ‘A troupe of actors.’

‘You know about the head?’ asked the young man. ‘We have it.’

Swan crossed himself, something he very rarely did. ‘You . . . have it?’

‘Yes. We stole it. From the Turks.’ Apollinaris seemed very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

He led them down a hall, and up a servant’s stair. At the top, he knocked softly at a pair of double doors. They opened.

Inside stood an enormous man with a cocked crossbow, a normally sized older man with another, and two women with the muscles of dancers, wearing men’s clothing, and with Turkish bows.

‘They’re from Cardinal Bessarion,’ Apollinaris said.

The room had pigeonholes in the walls, from floor to fifteen-foot ceilings, and every pigeonhole was filled with scrolls. Scrolls lay on the floor, and more were in baskets by the chairs.

In the middle of the room was a vast table, and in the centre of the table sat a reliquary slightly smaller than a man’s helmet. It looked to be made of solid gold, studded with pearls, enamel work and jewels.

Swan took it all in.

The crossbows didn’t waver. ‘Prove it,’ said the big man, in Greek.

‘How?’ Swan asked.

The man looked confused.

‘Look, I’ve come a long way. I thought I was coming for some books, but it appears I’ve been sent to get you lot. I have an escape plan, and all I need is a boat. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine.’ The whole time Swan was speaking he was looking at the reliquary.

It was . . . incredible.

First, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so much gold in one place at one time.

Secondly, the workmanship was . . . exquisite. Divine. Amazing.

Thirdly, it was covered – almost vulgarly so – in jewels. Swan wasn’t a jeweller, but he was pretty sure he was looking at diamonds. And rubies.

Large ones.

One of the dancers stepped between him and the reliquary. ‘We stole it,’ she said. ‘It’s ours.’

Peter fell on his knees.

So did Swan. He couldn’t help himself. He was twenty years old, and he’d been a devout Christian for every minute of the time – his mother had seen to that. He didn’t make a conscious decision to kneel. He just did.

Apollinaris grinned.

‘It really is the head of Saint George,’ he said.

‘May I . . . touch it?’ Swan asked, filled with the same vague piety that infected him when he was around Cardinal Bessarion.

The woman smiled. ‘Yes. I suppose.’ She stepped back. ‘How are you getting us out of here?’

‘How long have you been here?’ Swan asked.

‘Since the siege.’ Apollinaris shrugged. ‘Eventually we’d have abandoned the head and left the city. There’s no getting it out.’

‘The Turks know it is missing. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it.’ This from the older man.

Swan felt foolish, but something made him approach the object on his knees. He shuffled along until he reached the low table, and he opened the reliquary – it had a magnificent door, like the door to a miniature cathedral.

Inside was a brown skull. A cross had been inlaid into the smooth bone of the forehead. Otherwise, it was just a skull, and a very old one.

‘They say that whoever has the head of Saint George cannot be harmed by monsters or demons, by weapons, even by torture,’ said the prettier of the two dancers. She bowed. ‘I’m Irene.’

‘And I’m Andromache,’ said the other. ‘We are acrobats. And actors.’

Swan smiled and stood. ‘You’re the old woman at the gate.’

She smiled back. ‘And you are the Turk.’

The giant bowed. ‘Constantios, at your service,’ he said, stiffly.

The older man bowed as well. ‘Nikephorus,’ he said. He smiled bitterly. ‘Nikephorus Dukas.’

Swan tore his eyes from the relic. ‘Of the noble Dukas family?’ he asked.

‘One small branch, devoted to learning. We cannot all be busy ruining the empire.’ He shrugged as if his words were of no account. Then he pointed at the skull. ‘Familiarity will make you more comfortable with it,’ he said. ‘I confess we were silent for days after we . . . took it.’

‘It is like living with a gate into heaven,’ said Irene. She laughed – but softly, as if she was in church. ‘I am too much a sinner to be comfortable living with such a gate.’

Swan reached out and touched the skull.

Just for a moment, the world went white. Blank. Nothing – no noise, no sight.

He found he was on his knees again.

‘Oh my God,’ he said.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘Exactly.’

If the head was spectacular, the library was staggering.

‘This is all Bessarion’s?’ Swan asked, as he unrolled a scroll that seemed to have six plays in Greek all lined up together. He lacked the true connoisseur’s knowledge, but the scrolls seemed to be very old. The first play was entitled Taxiarchoi.

Taxiarchs were the archangels, in Greek.

‘Not all of it, by any means,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Some of it was mine. And some—’

Apollinaris laughed. ‘Most of it we stole. Or borrowed. I prefer to use the term rescued.’

Swan read a few lines. The main character was the god Dionysus, so that the play in question wasn’t about archangels at all.

After a moment, he guffawed.

In the scene he was reading, a weapons master was trying to teach the God of Wine to be a soldier. Swan had no idea how ancient the play might be, but just for a moment he had an odd, almost haunted feeling, as if the author of the play might be watching him. It was funny – deeply funny.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘That was mine. I collected all the plays I could find from the ancient world.’ He shook his head. ‘I used to fear that the Patriarch and his monks would find out, and I would be prosecuted.’

‘Who is this Eupolis?’ Swan asked.

Nikephorus bit his lip. Then he smiled. ‘I don’t really know,’ he admitted with a grandiloquent gesture.

Irene laughed and clapped her hands. ‘I’ve never heard you say that before, old man!’

Swan looked at another scroll. ‘And who was Heraklitus?’ he asked.

‘A philosopher,’ Nikephorus said. ‘I haven’t even read that one.’ He sighed. ‘The Suda – you know the Suda?’

Swan smiled. ‘Not at all, I fear.’

Nikephorus brightened. ‘While your ancestors were living in mud huts in Hyperborea, my dear young man, our monks were writing detailed encyclopedias of classical learning.’ He shook his head. ‘Classical learning comes and goes in fashion and tolerance,’ he said, somewhat peevishly. As if continuing his train of thought, he said, ‘I feared all the wrong things, and now my whole world is gone.’

‘Heraklitus was a philosopher like Aristotle? Like Plato?’ Swan asked.

‘Earlier, I think,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Not my field.’

Swan looked up at the scrolls. Hundreds of them. ‘Are any of these Aristotle?’ he asked.

‘All this,’ Irene said, smiling. Twenty scrolls sat in niches under a small marble bust. ‘This is an ancient statue of the man himself.’

Swan had that haunted feeling again. He took a scroll down.

An hour later, a dirty Christian beggar stopped a small Jewish beggar on the street.

‘I need to get a message to King David,’ the Christian said.

The boy nodded. ‘Sure, boss,’ he said, in Greek.

‘Just knock it in,’ Peter said.

Swan didn’t like waste. He prowled around the wellhead, because if they knocked it to pieces, it would be obvious to everyone how they’d escaped. And Swan liked to leave mystery behind him, when he could. It made for a better prank. A finer jest. And practically speaking, while he wasn’t sure who would be following him, he had a feeling . . .

On hands and knees, he found the deep crack that ran around the heavy marble block that held the cast bronze and stone wellhead. Under the dry-sink, he found a pair of holes in the marble, cut in at an angle.

Even better, leaning against the wall, he found two iron bars which fitted into the wellhead block.

It took four of them to lever it up. When they were done, they had an opening the size of a small cart, leading down into the darkness.

After dark, a wagon rolled up to the gate. Peter and Constantios watched it with bows drawn, while the two dancers covered the street and Swan went out the door into the courtyard.

Isaac slipped off the wagon box. ‘A boat?’ he asked. ‘It’s not even illegal to get a boat. You summoned me to get you a boat?’ He glared. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Simon means to sell me to the Turks,’ Swan said. ‘You?’

Isaac froze.

‘I find that sometimes this sort of talk saves time,’ Swan said. ‘There are more plots here than in the Bible. I want to make a straight deal. I will give you some very valuable items and some information, and you will provide me with this boat and take a single message to the Venetian quarter. And we’ll part friends, and be available to help each other another time. Simon won’t ever get to betray me, which he’ll live to be glad of. And I’ll survive to take your letters back to Venice.’

‘Why would I need you to carry my letters?’ Isaac asked.

‘I assume you plan to play the Venetian markets based on the Sultan’s invasion of the Morea.’ Swan shrugged. ‘I would.’

Isaac laughed. ‘Not bad. Why trust me?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘It saves time. And if everyone here is going to sell me, I’m dead. I have to trust someone.’

‘I agree.’ Isaac rubbed his beard. ‘I’m just not sure anyone has ever chosen me as the one to trust before.’ He laughed. ‘I like you, mad Englishman.’

Swan grinned. ‘Come back in two days. Everything you find in the house is yours.’ Swan handed over a note. ‘See to it this goes to Alessandro in the Venetian quarter. Like your packet – there’s nothing in it worth reading.’

Isaac smiled mirthlessly. ‘Balthazar said he liked you,’ he said. ‘So I will extend the courtesy of honesty. I can give you a day. Perhaps the two you want. Then I have to sell you, or I look . . . bad – to the Grand Turk.’

‘If you can make it two,’ Swan said, ‘I will count it an honest deal.’

Isaac bowed. ‘I will do my best.’

Swan took his hand, and they embraced briefly.

An hour later, the boat was floating, fully loaded, in the current.

Then they all climbed up one more time, swept the floors and the fireplaces, and the women went out and dumped the ash. Everything else went into the sewers until the house was clean. Then they levered the wellhead back into position and slid down the rope.

And then Irene climbed the wall like a spider and retrieved the rope.

‘What do we do with the ladder?’ Apollinaris asked.

Swan smiled. ‘Float it with us. Not far,’ he muttered.

Swan led them along the sewers, following his map. After the first arch – foundations, he assumed of the old city walls. Passing under the arch required very careful management of the boat and the floating ladder, but they got through, mostly dry. Swan counted the wells above them, and then stopped, cut loose the ladder, and raised it on to the walkway. He grinned at Peter and offered no explanation, and they were away again in moments.

The second time they had to pass under an arch, everyone had to swim, and Nikephorus, who couldn’t, had to hold on to the back of the boat. The older man was clearly terrified, and equally clearly in control of himself to a degree that caused him to rise high in Swan’s estimation.

Irene’s figure also caught Swan’s attention.

Cold, but triumphant, they passed east almost a mile, moving easily downstream. Once they had to get out on to the walkway, empty the boat, and carry everything around an obstruction where the street above had collapsed into the cavern, but there was water on the other side, and by late afternoon, Swan found them a campsite he’d scouted in the days before. ‘Don’t go anywhere!’ he insisted. ‘Tomorrow – at sunset. Out the water gate. I’ll meet you. If I can’t come, follow Peter.’

Peter came and stood with him. ‘Is this situation covered by my wages?’ he asked.

Swan considered the question. ‘No,’ he said.

Peter nodded. ‘Would you consider me off my head if I said I want a share?’

Swan considered this, too. ‘I’m still not quite sure how I make a ducat out of this,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t help but notice that you filled your quiver with the cardinal’s scrolls.’

‘I may be the only archer in the world with a quiver full of Aristotle, it’s true.’ Peter nodded.

‘You are a far better thief than I am,’ Swan said quietly.

‘Nonsense.’ Peter looked at the acrobats. ‘You stole the head of Saint George. I saw you.’

Swan considered denial. Then he shrugged.

Peter nodded. ‘So – I’m in for a share.’

‘So noted.’

‘What happened when you touched it?’ Peter asked.

‘Try yourself, and see. It’s real.’

Peter made a noise of derision. ‘The gold and jewels are real.’

Swan shrugged. ‘As you will. I’m off to the Venetian quarter. Don’t get lost.’

Peter nodded.

It was after dark when he dropped over the wall from the Pisan quarter into the Venetian. Shutters opened when he inadvertently overturned a handcart. He kept moving.

The inn in which the embassy were staying almost defeated him. With high walls and a gated entrance on the first level, surrounded by high buildings in the Venetian Gothic manner, it was an impenetrable fortress to a lone beggar.

He walked all the way around its block, heard voices, and found the stables – now empty. The stables didn’t have any windows, but as in buildings with ill-paid servants the world over, there was an obvious place to climb the wall. Swan was up and over and in the back yard, where once there had been a working fountain and horse troughs in a happier time.

A door was open at the back of the inn, and light seemed to flood out into the yard, brilliantly illuminating the man who stood there. He was talking to a woman who stood with her back to the light.

They blocked the door, and access.

Swan spent a weary half-hour listening to them flirt, and considering the irony – he’d crossed Constantinople undetected, and now couldn’t pass his own inn door because of a flirting couple.

‘You only want one thing, you dirty lecher,’ said the woman, with a laugh.

‘You want it too, my darling. My pomegranate,’ the man cooed.

‘My pomegranates aren’t all they were, either,’ she said. ‘Why do I even listen to your nonsense?’

‘Because the night is warm and you are beautiful—’

‘Does this work on other women, lout?’

‘There are no other women, divine one.’

She laughed. In Tom’s expert opinion, the whole thing was just a matter of time. He sat on his haunches in the shadow of the old horse yard.

‘Not here, lout!’

‘No one will come, Aphrodite.’

‘You are right that no one will come here – not me, and not you!’

‘I need you, navel of the world. Oh!’

He had her kirtle open – she had to have co-operated in that part, and Swan gave him full points, whoever he was. He was trying to get farther aboard her in the doorway. Swan cursed his hurry.

But she was of the same mind as Swan, and boxed the man’s ears.

As it turned out, her notion of privacy was the stable, which suited Swan. They made their way across the yard, one amorous exchange per step. For two people who seemed to him too old to care, they protracted the trip across the yard with more moans and caresses than he felt were possible.

But eventually, they vanished into the stables, and he ghosted across the inner yard, and in through the kitchen door.

The great inn kitchen was empty.

He stripped off his over-robe, threw it in the fire, climbed the steps with his bag on his shoulder and walked boldly to Alessandro’s room – he was now a Frank, exactly where he was supposed to be.

Alessandro was alone.

‘By the Virgin!’ he said, when Swan came in.

Swan grinned.

‘Alessandro,’ he said happily. ‘Listen, capitano. I have been to the cardinal’s house.’ He watched Alessandro’s face, but the Venetian gave nothing away.

‘Yes?’

‘I found a troupe of acrobats living there,’ he said.

Alessandro raised an eyebrow. ‘Eh?’ he said.

Either it was the finest performance Swan had ever seen, or Alessandro knew nothing.

‘They claim to be . . . spies – working for our cardinal.’ He shrugged. ‘They claim they have a message from the cardinal saying that someone would come and take them out of Constantinople.’

Alessandro nodded and stroked his short beard. ‘I see,’ he said slowly.

‘It occurred to me that they might be lying,’ Swan said.

Alessandro shrugged. ‘He has many . . . agents.’

‘So you weren’t told – perhaps when I was asleep – go and fetch the troupe of acrobats.’ Put that way, it sounded insane.

Alessandro rubbed his chin again. ‘The cardinal is most scrupulous at keeping all of us apart. Especially those he calls “day workers” from those he calls “night workers”.’

Swan nodded. ‘Did you get my note?’

Alessandro nodded. ‘I didn’t have to do anything. The bishop has already sent for the ship. Ser Marco will take us off from the quay at evensong tomorrow. Everyone is packed.’

Swan breathed a sigh. ‘Is the bishop ready? The word is he’s to be humiliated. That we will watch a procession of Christian slaves taken by Omar Reis, and see the Turkish army setting off to take the Morea.’

‘I know.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘Truly, I fear tomorrow. The bishop is a small man, and may behave . . . badly.’

‘Am I with you tomorrow? Or not?’

Alessandro scratched his ear. ‘I think I can use your wit.’

‘Are we going armed?’ Swan asked.

‘And armoured. We are the bodyguard he is allowed in his letters.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Best we get some sleep.’

‘Yes,’ Swan said.

An hour later, he was making his way along the underground sewers, his oil lamp making a tiny glow in the immense darkness of the caverns under the silent city.

Every step he took was foolish. He was afraid, and yet elated.

And a fool.

He had no need to try this. He was attempting to navigate the sewers at night, without anyone to help him. That was foolish. If he fell and so much as twisted an ankle, his entire enterprise would fail.

He kept walking.

I don’t’ need to do this, he told himself again.

But he kept walking.

He thought it must be midnight when he arrived at the ladder, just where he had left it. It took him some minutes to raise it alone, and he made considerable noise. Eventually, he got the base firmly seated on the walkway and the top inside the wellhead.

Khatun Bengül’s wellhead.

Then he paused, one foot on a rung of the ladder.

So – I made it here. I have the ladder up. I can walk away. This is . . . insane.

He found that he was climbing the ladder.

He shook his head. At himself.

Two rungs from the top, he rested his back against the well’s wall – probably just where his shoulder had struck in falling, he thought. Shook his head.

Insane.

He took the coil of rope off his shoulder and secured the grapnel.

I’m sure I swore yesterday never to do this again.

What if there are people in the kitchen?

Smiling at his own foolishness, he tossed the grapnel straight up.

He did cover his head.

Which was good, as it fell back with a lot of noise.

He sighed. Paid out one more coil of rope, took the grapnel by the stock, and threw.

He heard it hit. Outside the well. He pulled, and it came quite easily – he pulled it in very slowly, dragging it across the stones of her kitchen. And it caught. He pulled again, and it stayed tight.

Caught on some tiny projection? Or on the cross-beam?

He went up, putting as little weight on the grapnel as possible – his back against one wall of the well, feet against the opposite wall, walking up as he’d seen the acrobat girl do earlier.

She was nice. She was pretty. Why am I doing this?

Up and up.

At the top, he stopped to listen. The cover still wasn’t on the well. His back and sides hurt, and his neck . . .

He went over the edge.

Screaming eunuchs didn’t kill him, so he decided after a few moments that he was still safe.

He paused at the curtain to the stairwell.

Now, I can slip down the rope and go. I did it. I entered her apartment undetected. No need to go any farther.

His soft leather boots made no sound on the steps as he climbed.

He paused at the curtained doorway to the slave quarters, and listened. Her slaves were silent. Several were snoring.

He stopped outside the cedar and silver door. It was just as he remembered it.

If she screams, I’m dead.

This is foolish.

In fact, this gives foolish a whole new perspective.

He put a hand on her door. It was locked.

A German lock.

England had German locks.

It took him longer than he expected to open it. He had to find the tool in his belt purse, and it took him far too long to realise that the local workmen had installed the lock upside down.

Click.

I could just let this go.

Don’t try for revenge on Omar Reis.

He opened the door, very, very slowly.

He had to fight the sudden feeling that it was all a trap. The wave of paranoia came, and went, and he could smell the fear he had exuded.

He slid into the room. Closed the door with infinite patience.

He could hear her breathing. It was soft, and regular.

He went to her bedside.

And put a hand on her mouth, thinking, It is now officially too late to back out.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

She hesitated – and then threw her arms around his neck.

Then he put his mouth over her mouth.

‘No!’ she said, and pinned his legs with her own. She was very strong.

There was one lamp lit, and she was magnificent.

‘No,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Don’t be angry. It is . . . a matter of life and death.’ She leaned over him and licked his lips. ‘Listen, I’ve read books. There are a thousand other things we can do.’

Apparently, there were.

He kissed her at the wellhead, and the whole process began again. He’d meant it to be a kiss goodbye. It didn’t have that effect.

But eventually, she let him go down the rope Or rather, he forced himself out of her arms against his own will.

She dropped the grapnel to him after he was on the ladder. And blew him a kiss.

At the base of the ladder, he could still see her light. He felt an intense temptation to climb right back up, but there had been a change in the air of her apartments. And slaves rise early.

He could smell her on his skin – smell her perfume, which seemed to be in every fold of linen and silk in her room, and on every part of her body – rose and lavender and an Eastern scent he didn’t know. And her own scent – musky and heady. And strong.

He smelled her on his hands, and smiled, and then, after wrapping his clothes in a leather sack that would be waterproof for some minutes, he leaped into the water.

He swam downstream in the cistern, under the arch of the great wall, and again he found that darkness and deep water combined to panic him even when he knew that there was an opening at the far end. He emerged and pulled himself out on to the walkway – stronger this time – and, sack on shoulder, walked all the way to the end of the main cistern.

He dressed quietly, surprised to find that the scent of rose and lavender still clung to him, and climbed out of the cistern by the access doors. He crossed the main square, walked partway down the hill, and entered the next system. It was very dark, and when he saw the small fire that the acrobats had burning, he was very happy.

He approached as quietly as he could. But he was fifty feet from the fire when a someone spoke.

‘Don’t move,’ Peter said.

‘It’s only me,’ Swan said.

‘Don’t make too much noise,’ Peter insisted. ‘It took me a long time to get them to sleep.’

Swan walked carefully along the cistern’s shelf to the fire – really, just a small pile of charcoal that had been laid on the stone and lit. But it was warm, and he realised that he was cold.

‘We have wine,’ Peter said.

Andromache appeared beside the fire and smiled at him. She had Peter’s soldier’s cloak around her shoulders.

Swan accepted a cup of wine. ‘All is well?’

Peter shrugged and smiled a secretive smile. ‘I just spent a day underground with a troupe of actors who can’t stop talking.’ He glanced at Andromache. ‘Mind you, there are compensations.’

Swan finished his wine. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘Watch for us from the water gate. If you don’t see the Venetian galley—’

‘Yes?’ Peter asked. ‘Yes, what exactly do I do if there’s no ship?’

‘Switch roles and get them to take you out of the city,’ Swan said. ‘Save what you can.’

‘That’s how it is?’ Peter asked. ‘By the way, you know you smell like a Spanish whore.’

‘I lack your experience with Spanish whores,’ Swan said. ‘What do they smell like?’

‘Attar of roses and old sweat,’ Peter said.

The sun was rising when he slipped over the wall into the inn yard. He heard a woman’s voice from the stable, and he smiled, and went into the kitchen, where shocked servants scurried to get out of his way.

An hour later – face and hands washed, in best clothing, neat, and dead tired – he stood in his armour in the atrium waiting for the rest of the embassy.

Alessandro came down with Giannis and Cesare.

Cesare embraced him, then held him at arm’s length. ‘You look like hell,’ he said.

Giannis shook his head. ‘You smell like . . .’ He made a face. ‘Perfume.’

‘Christ on the cross, he does.’ Alessandro laughed. ‘I thought you were going to bed, scapegrace.’

Swan forced a grin. ‘There was a bed involved,’ he said.

The three men roared.

They carried their helmets under their arms, rather than wear them, as Swan had hoped, and he carried his through the streets. He wondered why he’d bothered to wash. It was four miles to the palace of the Sultan, and even in the early morning, it was a walk intended to discomfort and annoy.

As they walked, Alessandro drifted back from the bishop. ‘I have taken some precautions,’ he said.

Swan could barely remain awake. ‘Yes?’

‘I think it possible that the Sultan could . . . decide – to dispense with us.’ He shrugged.

‘You mean, kill us,’ Swan said.

Cesare started.

‘Yes. If so, it won’t happen at the palace. It will be a street attack.’ Alessandro was watching the buildings. ‘So we will not return along these streets.’

‘The palace is too public?’ Swan asked.

‘I have to hope so. If he chooses to kill us in the palace . . .’ Alessandro glanced over his shoulder.

Swan followed his eye. He hadn’t seen Yellow Face in days, and there he was.

‘Why, though?’ Swan asked.

Alessandro shrugged. ‘As a message? Because the bishop will annoy him? Because he’s ready for war with Venice anyway?’ Alessandro shook his head. ‘Your Jew friend – Isaac – sent me a warning.’

Swan tried to imagine some higher order of plot where Isaac would send them a false warning. He shook his head – fatigue was not helping him think. ‘I would listen to Isaac,’ he said carefully.

‘Listen, sleepy-head! Damn you, you English pup, I need you, and you smell like a French whore and look like a three-day drunk! Now that I have your attention – how far north do the sewers come?’

‘Christ – sorry, Alessandro. I haven’t come this far north. And I haven’t been in – or out – north of the market by the Venetian quarter.’

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Damn it to hell.’

The Palace of Blacharnae was at the north-east corner of the city. It had suffered substantial damage during the siege, but its woods and fountains appealed to the Sultan and he had taken it for his residence, although rumour said he usually lived in a great palace of tents on the plain just beyond.

The entrance hall was grander in every way than any similar hall in England, even the Guildhall in London. The square of St Mark’s in Venice had something of the majesty, but the apparently infinite vista of mosaics stretching away from the viewer struck Swan with wonder. And it was old. Swan couldn’t tell how old, but he was awestruck. A thousand years old?

The only man who seemed unaffected was the bishop, who led them into the great hall without looking to the right or left, up or down. Neither the mosaic ceilings nor the marble floor seemed to interest him.

The hall was lined by armoured sipahis, who leaned indolently on their lances and did not speak. The great doors at the far end of the hall were closed.

Swan stood still. There were six Christian men-at-arms, counting Cesare; and four more Venetian marines. They stood, five a side, flanking the embassy – the bishop, two interpreters, and four sailors with the gifts.

They stood. And stood.

So did the sipahis.

Sweat ran down Swan’s neck, gathered momentum in the middle of his back, and rolled all the way down to the top of his buttocks under his arming coat. The arming coat began to grow alarmingly heavy and wet. The weight of his harness seemed to grow. He could even feel – feel viscerally – the weight of the sword at his hip.

He flexed his knees.

He had too much time to think. Time to consider the troupe in the cisterns; time to consider the flaws in his plans.

Time to consider Khatun Bengül. Time to think about the risk he’d run. And why.

Revenge.

The joke was on him. He couldn’t get her out of his head, and he had gone to lie with her to revenge himself on her father. A petty, wicked sin.

Where did that thought come from?

‘I’m too fucking old for this,’ muttered Cesare, immediately behind him.

Alessandro was a statue of steel.

The bishop began to complain. At first, his complaints were aimed at members of his own staff. Then he walked over to one of the silent sipahis.

‘I demand to see the Sultan!’ he shouted, spittle flying.

The man ignored him.

‘Immediately!’ shrieked the outraged prelate. ‘I have waited nineteen days to deliver a letter and some presents!’

The sipahi might have been carved of leather. His aged face had vertical lines etched by sun and weather, and the man might have been a hundred years old, yet he stood in chain and plate, his pointed helmet a magnificent display of blue and gold, his scimitar hilt made of jade.

Swan looked him over and thought, There’s a killer.

‘I demand to see the Sultan immediately!’ shouted the bishop.

Very softly, Cesare said, ‘If we kill him ourselves, do you think the Sultan will let us go?’

And the great doors opened.

The bishop, caught a hundred feet from his entourage, scurried back, his heavy garments making the noise of a woman’s skirts as he crossed the marble floor.

No one watched him, because Sultan Mehmet II entered – led by fifty Royal Sipahis, followed by his personal bodyguard, surrounded by his advisers and friends. Every man was dressed in silk; every soldier’s armour was engraved with verses of the Holy Koran, inlaid in gold, blued like the sky. The courtiers had jewels in their turbans the size of bird’s eggs. Their robes were woven in complex patterns, and yet the whole made one pattern around the central figure of the Sultan as if a single intelligence had chosen all their clothes.

Swan bet that someone had.

Omar Reis was standing at the Sultan’s right hand.

The Sultan settled on to his throne, and Omar Reis was allowed a stool at his feet. The other courtiers bowed – some actually lay flat on their face before the sultan.

Alessandro said – quietly – ‘Kneel.’

All of the men-at-arms sank to one knee.

The bishop hissed, ‘On your feet! We do not kneel to some infidel warlord!’

None of the men-at-arms moved until the Turks began to move at the word of a chamberlain, who thumped the floor with his baton.

The bishop looked close to apoplexy.

The chamberlain began to speak. He spoke in Turkish, and another chamberlain spoke in Persian. One of the embassy’s interpreters began to speak.

‘It is a recitation of the Sultan’s titles and names. Allah’s servant, flower of felicity, lord of Rum and Antioch . . .’ The titles went on and on – some religious, some military, some tribal.

Swan went back to thinking about Khatun Bengül. Her hair – the scent of her. The scent was with him yet. He smiled.

‘Conquerer of Constantinople, Lord of Greece. He bids us welcome.’

Mehmet was young – of middle height, and quite handsome, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. He had large eyes that sparkled with intelligence, and the shoulders and arms of a swordsman. Yet he sat in quiet repose with a dignity often missing in young men, especially fighters.

Swan found him the most impressive monarch he’d met. On the other hand, Mehmet II had only Henry VI of England as a rival in that regard, and the comparison wasn’t even fair. It was like comparing a magnificent stallion with a small and rather shy donkey.

‘The Sultan greets you and asks if your lodging was to your satisfaction. Are you well fed? Has your stay in his new capital been pleasant?’ asked the interpreter.

Swan realised the there were Europeans standing among the Turkish courtiers. He didn’t know them well, but there was the Venetian senior merchant, and there was a Florentine who Alessandro had pointed out, the chief factor of the Florentine merchants.

They were standing with the Sultan.

Swan looked at Alessandro, caught his eye, and gave the slightest nod in the direction of the Venetian.

Alessandro allowed the slightest smile to cross his face. And gave his own minute nod.

So Alessandro had pulled strings to get Venice to send a representative, which made it almost impossible that they would all be murdered.

The bishop bowed – it was the closest thing to a social concession Swan had seen the man make. He spoke very quietly to the interpreter, who himself bowed.

He spoke in Turkish for what seemed to Swan to be a very long time.

He became aware that Omar Reis was watching him. The man had a slight smile on his face.

Swan smiled back. It wasn’t the wisest choice, but Swan couldn’t stop the smile.

It became a grin.

Omar Reis’s smile faltered.

The introductory oration ran to its final stanzas – in Persian.

‘That’s my bit,’ said Cesare.

At the poety, Mehmet sat forward.

The bishop, who had been toying with his magnificent crystal crozier, suddenly looked up.

Mehmet smiled. He leaned over and whispered something to the Florentine, who nodded and walked across the hall to the embassy, even as the chamberlain answered the embassy and the translator began to say:

‘The Sultan is delighted to accept the plaudits of his cousin, the Pope . . .’

The Turkish answer ground on – a little more pointed than the papal oration, in that it suggested that Christians had always been the aggressors and Islam, and Allah’s servant Mehmet and his father Murad, were but innocent servants of Allah’s will.

The Florentine stopped and bowed. ‘The Sultan wishes to know who among the embassy composed the poem at the end?’

Before he could be stopped, Cesare bowed. ‘I had that honour.’

‘You write in Persian?’ asked the Florentine.

‘I write in Latin. I found a translator.’ He bowed.

The Florentine returned his bow.

The Pope’s gift was a bridle – a magnificent piece of horse tack, decorated in gold, with medallions of the finest Italian work, buckles in blued steel and gold, dyed a deep red.

The Sultan looked at it, smiled, leaned over to Omar Reis and made some remark which caused all the men around him to laugh.

Their interpreters paled. The nearer said, ‘The sultan says the Pope takes me for a horse.’

The bishop went forward with the second gift, a cabinet such as Italian noblemen used to display their jewels and their antiquities – a magnificent piece of vulgarity, with a hundred drawers of exotic woods and mirrored backs, gold and silver wire inlay, marble terraces . . .

Like a palace, reproduced as a piece of furniture.

The Sultan didn’t even look at it, or the bishop. He had started to chat with the men closest to him. The bishop stood by the Pope’s great gift and time ticked by – literally, as there was a German clock in the centre of the cabinet. It was wound, and set, the machine ticking away.

Swan found it fascinating. A machine. A machine that could measure time.

Eventually the Sultan was interested, too, and when one of his confidants stopped talking, he rose suddenly, walked down from the dais, and stood by the cabinet. With the help of the Venetian factor, he opened the clock and looked at the mechanism. Then he shrugged, and said something in Turkish to Omar Reis, who grinned – or rather, showed his teeth.

The interpreter closest to Swan gulped audibly. ‘He says, first he takes me for a horse, and now, for a woman.’

Omar Reis passed within a few feet of Swan. He turned to grin his feral grin, and his nose wrinkled slightly.

Swan saw him pause in his progress across the floor.

He looked back – not a long look, but a mere flick of the eyes.

Swan would have sworn that the Wolf of Thrace’s eyes glowed. Swan had never had such a look of poisonous hatred directed at him in all his life.

Uh-oh.

Cesare, behind him, said, ‘Boy? What have you done?’

Alessandro looked at him.

I smell of Khatun Bengül’s perfume. Swan’s vision tunnelled, and for a moment, he thought he was going to faint. Or worse.

I’m an idiot.

Mehmet spoke quietly, his words clear in the silent hall.

The bishop bowed and extended a hand with the Pope’s letter.

The chamberlain took it. Without any grand display, he managed to give the impression that he was handling a small sack of human excrement. He deposited the letter with a lower functionary, who scurried away.

Mehmet nodded.

‘The Sultan would like to grant you a boon in return for your magnificent presents,’ said the interpreter. ‘He says that he has a surfeit of Christian slaves – so many that their value is plummeting throughout his empire. He is about to launch a great military campaign to crush rebels against his rule – and he says this will only result in still more Christian slaves.’

The bishop narrowed his eyes.

Most of the embassy were holding their breath.

‘The Sultan has arranged for some slaves to be waiting for you outside. In recognition of the Pope’s magnificent presents, he is willing to allow you to free five.’

Every Turk in the hall laughed.

The laughter was spontaneous and unforced, and even the Venetian and the Florentine felt it.

Mehmet smiled benevolently at them.

Omar Reis looked at Swan.

It took an effort of will for Swan to keep his hand off his sword-hilt.

The Turks left the hall faster than they had entered. The sipahis remained, standing nonchalantly around the perimeter, yet unmoving as carved stone.

Alessandro looked around. ‘Whatever is waiting for us outside, it will be humiliating and cruel. And outside the gates may be worse. Your Excellency, I propose that you choose the first five slaves we see – so that we may lose no time. Harden your heart and let us move.’

The bishop nodded.

‘Let me also recommend that all three of you gentlemen strip your robes and hand them to our sailors.’ He nodded to the bishop. ‘Your Excellency, I can protect you better if you are not a slow, stiff, obvious target.’

The elder of the two interpreters said, ‘You are making a mistake. If the Turks can pretend they didn’t recognise him—’

Alessandro shrugged. ‘I know that argument. I have my own.’ They had arrived at the great entrance doors. ‘Ready, Excellency?’

The bishop was so pale he might have been a corpse. ‘Do you really think that . . .’

Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes. We will be attacked. Probably by an angry, anti-Christian mob, in the street.’

The bishop’s hands trembled. ‘God’s will be done,’ he said.

The doors opened.

The great courtyard of the palace was full – full to bursting. Swan thought at first glance that there must be two thousand men and women there. Maybe twice as many.

They were, for the most part, naked, or wore a single garment. Old and young, they shared deeply lined, exhausted faces and scars. They had been deprived even of hope. They stood, abject. Families huddled together, or perhaps they were just loose associations of men and women formed in bondage.

A voice from one of the palace towers called out in Greek. ‘Christians! Your bishop will now select five of you to be freed. Present yourselves to him!’

Alessandro eyed the crowd.

Swan said, ‘We’ll never get through.’

Alessandro smiled. ‘Oh yes we will.’ He looked around one more time. The great gates on the far side of the courtyard were opening.

He looked tired, and his mouth was set very hard.

The slaves began to shuffle towards them. The press was instantly very thick, and Swan stumbled back.

‘Tell them they are all free, and should go through the gate.’ Alessandro spoke quietly, and every word sounded as if it was forced out of him.

‘There will be a stampede!’ Swan said.

‘Yes,’ Alessandro said. ‘Do it.’

The bishop was hanging on Alessandro’s arm. The Venetian marines were stringing their bows.

In Greek, Swan roared, ‘All of you are free! The bishop says so! Go – quickly! Out the gates! Go!’

The slaves stopped pressing in.

There was a moment . . .

Then there was a roar, or rather, a deep murmur, as the slaves began to comprehend what had been said. At the back of the crowd, slaves were running for the gate.

Archers began to loose shafts at them from the towers. And then the screams began.

‘Forward!’ roared Alessandro. ‘Cut your way through if you must.’

Swan still had his helmet under his arm. Now it seemed like a foolish liability. He wasn’t going to put it on his head.

He drew his sword.

The bishop had stopped. He was trying to shepherd five slaves. He touched them, grabbed their hands . . .

One of them took a Turkish arrow in the gut. The man sat abruptly, legs spread, the arrow sticking out of his back. He fell forward a little, and blood ran out of his mouth, but he didn’t scream. He just looked . . . surprised.

The bishop began to weep.

He was holding the hand of a little girl, and trying to drag her along, and a woman – her mother? – followed them, reaching for the girl.

An arrow struck her, and she fell.

Swan swept the little girl up and held her in his helmet arm, and ran for the gate.

No arrows touched him.

The bishop grabbed another child and dragged him along behind. The child screamed. The child’s father called ‘Run, run!’ in Greek.

Looking back from the gate, Swan could see very few bodies, and a great deal of screaming panic.

They ran through the gate, and out into the main thoroughfare of the northern part of the city – almost like a country road, so far from the inhabited core.

But there was no Turkish ambush. A dozen mounted Turks were quietly rounding up the slaves, but they offered no violence to the embassy. They did smile, and laugh, and point.

Alessandro didn’t stop moving. ‘This way,’ he called, and they were off, across a rubble-strewn field where once there had been a set of noblemen’s houses. The child sitting on Swan’s arm seemed to weigh ten stone, and he cursed the useless helmet. He was breathing like a bellows.

The mounted Turks watched them go, laughing and calling things.

They went almost a quarter-mile across the rubble, down old streets with no buildings left on either side, and through a great field that looked as if it had been recently burned.

A great semicircle of churches, their gold or bronze domes rising above buildings, tenements and rubble, marked the edge of the inhabited city, still another quarter of a mile away. To the north, behind them, a column of mounted Turks trotted out of the Blacharnae Palace.

‘We’ve come away with nine slaves,’ Alessandro said. He motioned for them to stop, and everyone – armoured or not – stood, virtually unable to speak, breathing like so many armourer’s bellows.

‘If I escape this, I will burn a hundred candles of white wax on the altar of Saint Mark,’ panted one of the young Venetian men-at-arms.

Cesare simply leaned over and threw up. He did it neatly, wih the economy of the heavy drinker, and then he spat.

Swan had a water bottle, and he passed it to his friend, who raised it in a mock toast. ‘When I die, see that Donna Lucrescia has all my love, and give my money to the poor.’ He stood bent over, and his breaths came in great gasps.

Alessandro was watching the Turks to the north. Ahead of them, at the edge of the suburbs, there was a low roar like distant surf.

Alessandro rubbed his chin. ‘I’m going to assume, for the sake of speed, that you ignored my advice and took some petty revenge on Omar Reis.’

Swan looked at the Turks. ‘I—’

Alessandro raised a hand, forestalling argument. ‘I have misspent my life, wasted my patronage, squandered my father’s money, and lived a life steeped in sin. Despite which, I’m not sure I ever managed to be so complete a dangerous, ignorant fool as you.’ He shrugged. ‘Although I admit that you perform these little miracles of idiocy with a certain sprezzatura.’

‘What did you do?’ gasped Cesare. ‘Sleep with his wife?’

‘Daughter,’ said Swan, with some pride mixed with regret.

Cesare laughed. ‘I’m so glad I’m about to die in a great crusade – a true reflection of the state of the faith, by God! We are not a handful of Christians standing against the horses of Islam! We’re a dozen dupes of Thomas Swan’s love affair!’ He laughed.

‘He wasn’t going to let us go,’ Swan argued. There was a whine in his voice.

‘He might have,’ Alessandro said. ‘He might not have. I’m sure you made the Sultan’s choice easier.’ He spat. Pointed with the dagger in his right fist. ‘See the crowd?’ he said.

Cesare shook his head. ‘They look like Greeks.’

‘They are Greeks,’ Alessandro said. ‘The Turks have raised the city against us.’

‘But they’re Christians!’ said one of the Venetians.

Swan looked at the bishop. ‘We represent the Pope,’ he said bitterly. ‘Most of the Greeks hate the Pope worse than the Sultan.’ He glared at Alessandro. ‘You can’t pin that one on me. That crowd was fanned to flames before . . .’

Alessandro smiled his hard, killing smile. ‘I agree. There is plenty of blame to go around.’ He bit his lip. ‘How far to the first cistern?’

Swan shrugged. ‘A mile, at least. There’s an aqueduct above the Plataea, so there must be an entrance there.’

Giannis was talking quickly to one of the freed slaves, a woman of forty. He was begging her to precede them and proclaim to the crowd that the bishop had saved her. He promised her a place aboard their ship.

She stared at him, blank eyed.

When they rose to their feet, she just sat, head down.

So they went towards the crowd with only eight slave children as their protection.

The crowd was led by priests – at least a dozen of them. Giannis went forward to negotiate, and was hit with a paving stone. Luckily, the stone hit the peak of his helmet, but the message was clear, and his shouts in Greek were ignored.

‘The Turks have set this up beautifully,’ Alessandro said. ‘We will be murdered by a Greek crowd. Or we kill our way through a Greek crowd. Either way, the Sultan wins.’

The bishop emerged from his escort. He wasn’t a tall man, just middle height, with mouse-brown hair and a weak chin. But he took his bishop’s crozier back from a terrified sailor. His hands shook. But he set his face.

‘I forbid you to kill them,’ he said.

‘Excellency,’ said Alessandro. He bowed his head.

The bishop threw his outer robe around his shoulders and put his mitre on his head, and began to walk towards the crowd.

A young man threw a paving stone too big for him. It didn’t come close to the bishop, but it started a horde of small boys throwing clods of earth. The bishop kept walking across the rubble.

In some ways, it was the bravest thing Swan had ever seen. Nothing in the bishop’s previous behaviour had led him to expect this – but in his heart, he was impressed.

He thought of profit, and loss, and all the effort he’d put into his plan, and he shook his head once, and said, ‘Fuck,’ very clearly, in English.

Then he put the small girl down, and took his helmet, a fine Milanese armet, out from under his arm. His arm was cramping. He opened the visor, dropped the falling buff, and peeled back the hinged cheek plates.

Inside lay the fantastical jewelled reliquary of the head of St George. He held it high above his head, and followed the bishop.

The head, and the children, got them through the crowd alive, unharmed and unblooded.

One of the priests offered to guide them, and the party began to work their way south and east through the suburbs – mostly abandoned, with groups of occupied houses like tiny villages set among the crumbling ruins of others abandoned a few months, a few years or a few centuries before.

As soon as they entered the narrow streets, they lost sight of the mounted Turks, and everything else except the sun in the sky overhead.

They moved as fast as the bishop and the children would allow them to move. The men took turns carrying the children, and no one – not even Alessandro – proposed that the children be left.

Up Fifth Hill, and down again, with a quick glimpse of the Golden Horn off to the east, shining in the sun. Across at Galata, three low vessels were laid out on the quays, ready for sea.

Alessandro pointed to them. ‘That’s our ride home, my friends,’ he said, and the men responded with another burst of speed.

Down Fifth Hill on the eastern flank, into the dense slum at its base and up along the ridge that held both Fifth and Fourth Hill, headed almost due east. They took a looping series of alleys, and the priest apologised for the state of the streets.

Giannis kissed the man’s ring. ‘We would be dead without you, Father,’ he said.

‘See that your heretics save the head,’ he responded. ‘I need no other reward. Keep it from the filthy Turks, and perhaps some day it will return to us.’

High on the northern flank of Fourth Hill, Swan stopped the priest.

‘I want to get into the cisterns,’ he said.

The priest looked startled, although whether at his Greek or his knowledge of the cisterns Swan didn’t know.

‘I can see an aqueduct from here,’ Swan insisted.

The priest paused. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I can take you there. You know the sewers?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I think so,’ he said.

The priest nodded. ‘Few do. Most of them are thieves.’

The aqueduct ran above ground, well over their heads, but it gave Swan hope. He stowed the head again, in his armet, after the priest touched it, venerated it, and prayed.

Then they set off under the aqueduct, leaving the priest behind. Everyone was flagging. And the sun was headed for the horizon.

The Turks were fanning out. From the flank of Fourth Hill, it was easy to see that they had not found the embassy where they expected, and now the regiment of cavalry was breaking up.

‘Now is not the time to fail,’ Swan called. ‘Come on!’

The ground under the aqueduct was rocky, but there was an obvious walkway, and they jogged along, armour creaking and clanking as they went. The youngest Venetian cut away his tassets. They all drank water and ran again.

Down the ridge. Twice they had to detour around arms of the city, new or old, that had grown in under the aqueduct, and then they were north and west of the market, and Swan muttered a prayer of gratitude to God.

He knew where he was.

‘Almost there!’ he said. He pointed down into the market below them, where a ruined fountain had collapsed into the underground sewer.

Alessandro took him aside. ‘We’re spent. Is it true? We are almost to your underground palaces?’

‘Half a mile. Less. Please, everyone. We are almost safe.’

Alessandro stopped them, gathered them in a tight group, and they walked on, breathing hard – down the last slopes of the steep ridge, and into the back of a dense residential quarter, with houses packed tight – some abandoned and some very much inhabited. Greeks watched them with sullen indifference.

A group of young men began to shadow them.

And then, as they turned north to pick up the street that Swan knew led to the market, he saw Yellow Face at the same moment that the spy saw him.

The tall man turned, hiked up his kaftan and ran.

‘Kill him,’ Swan shouted at the marine, but none of them had a shaft on his bow, and Yellow Face was gone before they were ready to loose.

Alessandro looked at him, a question in his eyes and the set of his mouth.

‘A spy. For the Turks, I think. Perhaps for Omar Reis. Either way, they’ll be on us in a few heartbeats.’

‘Let’s run, then,’ said Alessandro, and suited action to word.

‘If they see us go into the sewers . . .’ Swan said. But he followed the capitano, and they all ran off down the street.

The bishop tripped and fell.

One of the sailors paused.

Swan tried to make himself run on, but he didn’t. He ran back and helped the sailor get the bishop to his feet. The man was bleeding from an abrasion on his chin.

‘Take this,’ Swan said, and handed his helmet to the sailor. He lifted the bishop, threw him over his shoulders, and staggered towards the market, now in sight.

A clod of earth hit the sailor. And he stumbled.

Swan thought, Why am I saving the bishop?

He staggered on.

A clod of earth hit him.

A young Greek man ran out into the street and yelled ‘Death to the heretics!’ in Greek, and another clod of earth hit – this time striking the bishop on his shoulders.

The weight of his armour and the weight of the bishop – thankfully, not the largest ecclesiastical size of bishop, but not a slim man – was cutting through his burst of spirit.

The oldest of the Venetian marines – the one that the others called ‘The Spaniard’ – turned, paused, and came back towards Swan. Without a word, he took the bishop’s legs, and they staggered on together, the sailor staying with them, eyes glazed with fear. He didn’t have a weapon.

Since no one came to drive them off, the Greek youths grew bolder, and there were stones mixed in with the clods of earth. They rang off Swan’s backplate and his arm harnesses.

Swan’s whole world narrowed to the effort of staggering, off balance, along the time-worn street towards the distant market. It didn’t seem to grow any closer.

He heard hoof-beats.

They started to cross a major thoroughfare and had only fifty paces to go to the market. The old ruin of the fountain was another fifty paces beyond. Swan looked to the left and saw the horsemen – three Turkish riders, with another dozen well behind them – coming at a gallop.

They were all but on top of him.

He and the Spaniard dropped the bishop in the street as the first arrow flew. It passed between them.

The second arrow screeched along Swan’s left shoulder, deeply marking the steel, and fell to the street.

The third arrow all but parted Swan’s hair and reminded him that he didn’t have a helmet. He got his sword out of his scabbard and his buckler off his hip. The bishop curled into a ball and prayed.

The first Turk hurtled by, an arm’s length away, leaning out over his horse on Swan’s buckler side, an arrow drawn all the way to his chin. Tom threw his buckler hand up as the man loosed, and the arrow struck his buckler’s steel boss and left a deep dent, all but numbing Swan’s hand.

The Spaniard didn’t wait for the second Turk, but stepped in front of his horse, severing the reins and slicing deeply into the horse’s neck – the horse was dead immediately and began to collapse under the Turk, who nonetheless took his shot at the range of a few feet. His arrow caught the Spaniard in the middle of the chest and knocked him down. Then horse and rider fell in a spectacular spray of dust and blood.

The third Turk changed direction to avoid the dying horse ahead of him, rose in his saddle, holding on with only his knees, bow drawn.

For what seemed like a brief eternity, Swan was looking down the length of that arrow, and then the Turk loosed. In the same heartbeat, the sailor holding his helmet lurched away from the dying horse and, tripping over the bishop, lifted the armet over his head. The Turkish arrow crashed into the Milanese helmet and careened away.

Swan saw the disgust on the Turk’s face as he went by.

The armet containing the head crashed to the earth.

The Spaniard was alive. The arrow had dented his breastplate and the man was struggling to breathe, but it hadn’t penetrated. The two Turks still mounted were turning their horses.

The other dozen were coming.

Swan gave the Spaniard his hand and lifted the man to his feet.

He took the bow from his bow case, whipped an arrow on to the bowstring, and loosed at the dozen horsemen charging them. As far as Swan could see, he missed, but his attention was now on the two horsemen behind him.

The sailor got to his feet and went to retrieve the helmet.

The nearest mounted Turk put an arrow into him from fifty feet. The sailor screamed, fell heavily on all fours, and screamed again, shot in the groin.

The two Turks started towards Swan.

Swan picked up a rock. It was all he could think to do.

An arrow whistled over his head.

He jumped, a move his uncles had taught him, leaping hard with both feet. He landed by the helmet, and his right arm went back.

The nearest Turk took a crossbow bolt just above the waist. He collapsed back, then forward, and still didn’t fall from his horse’s back, even though the bolt was sticking halfway out of his back. But he dropped his bow.

The farther man had to rein in to avoid his mate’s horse, and Swan threw, with all his fear and hate behind it, and his rock struck the man’s horse in the head, and the horse shied violently, sidestepping, rearing, and blew out a great breath, utterly spoiling his master’s aim, and that arrow vanished well over Swan, who charged the Turk while the man tried to get control of his horse, his right hand seizing his sword back from his left. A few paces behind Swan, the wounded Turk finally fell from the saddle, and his horse stopped immediately and stood over her fallen man.

The Turk nearest Swan gave up on fighting his mare, dropped his bow, and drew his sword.

Swan made it to his side and pushed his buckler at the man, drawing a heavy cut that rang off the buckler’s steel boss, and Swan’s counter-cut scored, cutting the man’s fingers and his wrist – having hit, Swan cut a reverso up into the man’s chin, and punched it home with a jab like a boxing blow – all in a pair of heartbeats. It was a set piece he’d learned from the maestro in Venice, and it worked beautifully, even when his opponent was four feet higher and cutting down.

He was still admiring his own swordsmanship when his victim’s horse knocked him flat. His backplate took the animal’s kick, and he rolled in the dust and saw the Spaniard loose an arrow.

The other group of Turks had stopped to shoot. It was a natural reaction for an archer, but it cost them time, and the Spaniard loosed shaft after shaft – not accurately, but the Turks were densely enough packed that many of his arrows hit horses, exposed flesh – even a ricochet, or a broken splinter in a horse’s hoof, could change the course of a small fight. And his flow of shafts disconcerted them.

And another carefully aimed crossbow bolt struck, tearing a horseman from his saddle.

Swan got to his knees, the pain in his back ebbing from unbearable to bearable where the horse had kicked him. He retrieved his sword, got to his feet, and stumbled from the pain.

The Turks had begun to return the marine’s arrows, with interest – six for one. But the Spaniard was canny – he loosed and moved, loosed and moved, always headed for the cover of the market plaza and the distant fountain.

Swan saw Giannis at the edge of the market as the Greek man-at-arms leaned out from the cover of an ancient pillar and snapped off another crossbow bolt. It hit a horse.

Swan went from walking to a stumbling, shuffling jog. Two arrows passed close to him, but the Turks were now concentrating all their arrows on the Spaniard, and all that came his way were overshots.

He managed to run.

The bishop lay unmoving. The head of St George lay in the middle of the street, wrapped in his armet.

He couldn’t think of rescuing either of them, right now. Instead, he passed the bishop, got a hand up, and seized the bridle of the horse standing by the corpse of the first man Giannis had killed. Without breaking stride he vaulted into the saddle, gathered the reins, and leaned way out over the horse’s neck.

‘No! Thomas!’ yelled Alessandro at his back.

I got them all into this, Swan thought.

He pointed the head of the Turkish horse at the enemy, pressed his spurless heels into her sides and rolled his weight forward over her neck. She got the message and leaped into a gallop. Swan finally got the reins under his buckler hand and concentrated on holding on with his knees.

He kept his buckler up near his head.

He heard the flat crack as Giannis discharged another bolt.

And then he was on them, although his mare was suddenly sluggish – she slowed from a gallop to a canter, and he couldn’t make her turn. His buckler slammed into an archer’s hands as he raised his bow, and Swan almost lost his seat cutting across his body to get the man – a weak blow that nonetheless mangled his opponent’s bow-arm.

Swan had never actually fought from horseback before.

The second Turk loosed at him from a horse length away, and the arrow went through the outer rim of his buckler, passed up the length of his arm, and cut into his neck. Swan was again forced to cut across his body because his damned horse wouldn’t turn – he missed his cut, but by sheer luck the mare’s stumble and the alignment of his point spitted his opponent on his sword, and the man grabbed the blade in his neck with both hands and ripped it from Swan’s grasp.

At that moment, Swan’s horse, shot by a dozen arrows, subsided to the ground. Swan fell and hit the ground gently enough, but now he lost his buckler too.

He rolled to his feet.

There was dust everywhere, and they couldn’t see him, and he had trouble finding them, even a horse length away. He drew the dagger from his hip, ran three steps and threw himself at a man who was looking the other way in the dust. The dagger went home in the man’s back and Swan dragged him from his saddle, but instead of a clean kill and possession of the man’s horse, Swan found himself pinned under the falling man, his feet still caught in his stirrups, and the horse wheeling around them like the equine rim of a human wheel. Swan let go in disgust and fell backwards, and the horse bolted, the corpse of the dead man jolting obscenely behind.

Swan just sat in the swirling dust. It was as if he was a puppet and his strings had been cut. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet.

But the Turks – the survivors – had given the fight up as a bad job, and ridden free. They’d cantered away north, to the next major intersection almost a stadion away. Even as Swan tried to watch them amid the dust and his own fatigue, he saw the first of their arrows winging towards him.

It missed.

He began to crawl back towards the bishop. Then he realised that his most prized possession – the count’s sword – was lying pinned under a dead Turk. He turned and crawled like a baby to the man’s corpse. His hands were still locked around the blade.

Swan got his feet under him and rose.

Arrows began to sink into the street around him.

He got his hands on the hilt and pulled. He wiped it on the dead man’s kaftan, and sheathed it.

And, out of pure stubbornness, he took the man’s curved dagger and his belt purse. Only then did he lurch into an exhausted run. It was only a hundred paces back to the bishop, but it seemed like an English country mile. Men were shouting – another of the Venetian marines was loosing arrows, and arrows were falling around him. The Spaniard slumped to his knees and then fell to the ground.

The bishop rose to his knees and lifted his pectoral cross. The second marine took a Turkish arrow in his shoulder and fell. The sailor who had carried the head lay unmoving. Even as Swan stumbled up, Alessandro lifted the Spaniard over his shoulder – the man must have been hurt worse than had at first appeared. And Giannis snapped another shot at the now-distant Turks and slung his crossbow.

‘Bishop!’ croaked Swan.

Giannis saw what he wanted and went to the bishop.

Swan got his hands on the armet. The tight-wrapped cloth inside the helmet looked intact.

He shuffled towards the market.

Giannis got the bishop on to his shoulder and followed him.

Cesare joined the Greek and took the man’s legs, and they ran in a sort of sideways shuffle towards the fountain.

North along the avenue, Swan could see a man in a plumed turban on a fine bay horse. He was at the head of a squadron of Turks – perhaps a hundred. He had a horse-tail riding whip in his hand, and he used it to gesture – at them.

Swan placed his helmet carefully on the ground, picked up the Spaniard’s abandoned bow, fitted an arrow from a Turk’s nearby quiver, and took a deep breath.

‘Swan!’ roared Alessandro.

They had the bishop at the edge of the fountain.

He raised the bow. The range was extreme – two hundred paces, at least.

He drew the nock of the arrow all the way to his own ear, as his uncles had taught him. It felt odd with the small Turkish bow, but it seemed to pull very much the way the bows of his youth pulled. Heavy. But beautifully balanced.

He raised the sharp, barbed point of the arrow twelve fingers above Omar Reis’s head. He compensated for the breeze, let out a little breath, and loosed, his hand flying from the string as in a dramatic plucking of a harp.

He ignored the shouts of his companions and watched the fall of his shot, because it felt right. An archer knows.

The arrow rose high over the streets of the ancient city, and then, like one of Idris’s falcons, it fell.

The Wolf of Thrace and his horse fell silently, two hundred paces away. The horse kicked, and dust flew, and Swan could see no more. He turned, scooped up the helmet, and ran.

‘I got him!’ he whooped like a boy when he caught Alessandro.

‘Got who?’ asked the Venetian.

‘I put an arrow in Omar Reis!’ He laughed.

Alessandro looked at him in disgust. ‘If you have done such a foolish thing, they will hunt us to the ends of the earth,’ he said wearily. ‘Now lead us through your sewers.’

There was no further pursuit.

In an hour, the exhausted and bedraggled survivors were in the Venetian quarter. Swan was pissing blood; the Spaniard had an arrow in his left thigh that the Venetian quarter barber-surgeon refused to touch, and Alessandro sent him on his way. A sailor was dead; another of the marines badly wounded with an arrow in the shoulder, and all of the men-at-arms were virtually unable to move from exhaustion.

The two Venetian galleys were on their way, halfway across the Golden Horn. The sun was setting. But north and west of the Venetian galleys, half a dozen Turkish galleys were crossing their lateen yards and making ready for sea.

The bishop had been pinked by two arrows, and was badly bruised by rocks and clods of earth, and despite that, he was everywhere, hobbling on a makeshift crutch, full of spirit – almost cheerful.

Alessandro watched him.

‘Not what I expected,’ Swan said carefully. Alessandro seemed to blame him for the whole incident.

But the Venetian shrugged. ‘He has surprised himself,’ said the Italian. ‘He is braver than he thought, and a better man. It has made him . . . happy. I have seen this before.’ He managed a rueful smile. ‘Perhaps never such a volte-face as this, but still . . .’

Cesare was downing a cup of wine. ‘Christ, what if we had to like him?’

The Venetian bailli entered the yard of the inn and began to shout at the bishop.

Alessandro still had his armour on. He waved at the rest of the party. ‘Get your kit to the wharf. Now. Immediately. The bailli is threatening to hand us over to the Turks.’

Swan was on his way to his room when he realised that the small boy standing at the open front door of the inn was familiar. The boy brightened when he saw Swan.

‘King David is looking for you. At the gate!’ he said. And off he ran, in the way of small boys.

Swan thought about it.

Isaac might have something useful to say. He would certainly have a packet of his letters for Venice.

Or he might have a party of Turks – or even a dozen mercenaries, to take Swan alive, and hand him to Omar Reis, if he lived.

I don’t have to do this, Swan thought.

So he went. He was in armour, with his sword at his side. His buckler was lost.

There was no janissary at the gate. Instead, there was Isaac.

‘How did you escape?’ Isaac asked as soon as Swan appeared.

‘I have some tricks,’ Swan said wearily. ‘I shot Omar Reis.’

‘You killed Omar Reis’s horse,’ Isaac said.

Swan laughed. Perhaps it was the fatigue, or the heat, or the wine, but he laughed and laughed, and he couldn’t stop, like a small child. Isaac shook his head.

‘The Turks will be here in a few minutes, to demand you be handed over,’ he said. He pointed across the square, where Yellow Face was obvious by an ancient archway. ‘I have to know. How – how exactly – did you get out of Bessarion’s house? I had watchers, and you eluded them.’

Swan rubbed his beard. ‘Trade secret, which I will sell you. Can you delay the Turks by an hour?’

Isaac gestured at himself with both hands. ‘I? A mere Jew?’ He shrugged.

Swan waited.

Isaac rocked his head back and forth. ‘Ah. Perhaps I could at that.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘I think they want you to get away. I think they have decided to use you as an . . . incident. If they catch you – that might be inconvenient for them as well.’ He handed Swan a heavy packet. ‘My letters for Venice. And my cousin Simon’s, as well. He did not, as it turned out, sell you to the Turks.’ The Jewish merchant nodded. ‘There is a letter in that packet addressed to you. Lord Idris brought it to my brother. In person.’

‘Good Christ,’ Swan said.

‘Omar Reis will want you dead, even if his master Mehmet has decided to let you go,’ Isaac said. ‘Nonetheless, I can purchase you an hour of time.’

Swan reached into the leather bag he wore at his shoulder, and took out his tablet of paper, and tore off his map of the sewers and conduits. He handed it to Simon with a bow – he didn’t have the power in his muscles for a flourish. ‘They don’t all link up,’ he said sadly. ‘I thought they would. But you can pass from one to another without being noticed, if your hunters don’t know where to look.’

Isaac was looking at the map. ‘These aren’t streets—’ he said slowly.

‘Sewers. The ancient cisterns. That’s my map.’ Swan leaned back against the gate to the Venetian quarter.

Isaac laughed. ‘You know the sewers?’ he asked. He shook his head. ‘Hug my cousin Balthazar for me. Pass that packet on, and he will see you rewarded, I promise. You have been . . . most entertaining, Messire Swan.’

Swan embraced the man, who seemed surprised to be embraced – but they kissed each other’s cheeks, and Isaac chuckled. ‘Go with God, Frank,’ he said.

‘Thanks!’ Swan said, and ran back through the gate.

‘Wait!’ Isaac called. ‘Where did Bessarion’s library go? And what if I find you more books?’

Swan waved.

They boarded Nike in minutes – the men in their armour, the embassy boarding with greatly reduced baggage. Bags went straight to the hold under the rowers’ feet, and Swan took a moment to grab an old, open-faced bascinet from the Venetian guardhouse and put it on his head.

Alessandro came and stood by him at the edge of the command deck. ‘Where – exactly – are we picking up this boat?’ he asked.

Swan pointed a mile down the European shore of the Horn. ‘Right at the point.’

Ser Marco grunted. ‘Where the currents are the worst. Nonetheless – any Venetian knows those waters. That is where Dandalo stormed the city.’

Claudio, the surgeon, was already at work on the Spaniard before they were under way. And north of them, three Turkish galleys left their docks and started down the Horn towards them in the failing light.

Alessandro turned and spoke to Ser Marco. ‘Omar Reis will stop at nothing to get us,’ he said.

Ser Marco fingered his beard and looked at the sky and the sea. He spat over the side. ‘A Turkish ship? Catch me?’ He smiled. ‘We’ll see.’

And then the bow was clear of the Venetian quay, and they were in the current, moving south, and east.

‘I wish . . .’ Swan said, and Alessandro looked at him.

‘You wish?’ he asked.

‘I wish I’d thought to send a decoy,’ Swan said. ‘Another ship, waiting on the south side of the city. In the old imperial docks.’

Alessandro laughed. ‘That will have to wait until next time,’ he said.

Swan looked at the Turkish squadron coming down the current behind them. ‘I don’t plan to come back,’ he said. ‘Ever.’

Of course, in the same breath he said that, he thought of the letter from Idris. And possibly, Khatun Bengül.

He sighed.

The mile passed very quickly.

He was in the bow, watching. From a little less than half a mile, he could see the water gate. Closer in, he could see fishing boats along the point, and at a quarter of a mile, he could see that there was activity near the gate.

There were too many boats, too close to the gate.

He wondered if they were there ahead of him.

How could they be?

Even Isaac hadn’t had time to sell him yet.

At two hundred yards, he saw that all the boats he was looking at were far too big.

At a hundred yards, he saw the tiny cockleshell which was their rowing boat. It was emerging from the gate – a tiny, low thing, with too much aboard. Nikephorus was lying atop the canvas sheet, and the rest of them – including Peter – were slipping into the water. The waves tossed the little boat dreadfully.

Swan ran aft along the companionway that passed between the rowers amidships.

‘That’s my boat!’ he said to Ser Marco.

‘That little thing?’ Ser Marco grunted. His eyes flicked up to the darkening sky. ‘We’ll tow her under if we throw her a line at this speed.’ Louder, he said to his timoneer, ‘Back your oars!’ He leaned over to the helmsman. ‘Lay me alongside that little boat. Don’t swamp it.’

The Venetian’s seamanship was incredible. The helmsman turned the ship – a minute turn, but one that allowed the hull to pass directly alongside the little rowing boat that bobbed in the current. It passed under the oars. A sailor at the first oar-port passed a rope to Nikephorus, who took it awkwardly – but he caught it. The oars remained stationary in the water, holding the Venetian galley in place, even as the current moved both boats together, out to sea.

Behind them, the three Turkish ships began to gain on them.

The acrobats clearly had had a plan of their own, because Irene appeared from the water with a coil of rope around her waist, and climbed over the ram – glitteringly naked, to the rapt admiration of the Arsenali. As soon as she belayed her rope, her comrades followed her – Andromache, followed by Constantios’s heavily muscled form, followed by Peter, who all but bounced up the side, and last of all, Apollinaris. By then, Swan was in the bows, giving each a hand as they came over the box that housed the marines in combat.

Alessandro gallantly threw oarsmen’s cloaks over the women. The oarsmen themselves applauded.

Amidships, a pair of sailors manhandled Nikephorus aboard.

Astern in the setting sun, the Turkish galleys were almost in bowshot.

Swan got Apollinaris up the side, and then turned and ran aft again. Nikephorus was aboard, and dry.

He had a bag in his hand.

Behind him the sailors were pitching bags from the small boat up on to the deck of the galley.

The first Turkish arrows began to fall, and Ser Marco turned to Swan. ‘What’s in the boat? The truth, now.’

Another bag came up the side.

‘Cardinal Bessarion’s library,’ Swan said.

Ser Marco nodded. ‘Give way, all!’ he roared, and the great oars bit the water. He looked aft, where the Turkish galleys were flying at them. ‘I love books,’ he said. His eyes met Swan’s. ‘But I love my oarsmen more.’

At their feet, the small boat – still attached to the galley by two ropes – seemed to skip along with the Venetian ship. The sailor who had been aboard throwing sacks leaped clear, and caught himself on one of the oar-ports – got a foot inboard, and then swung up and over the gunwale, as agile as an African monkey.

More than half of the cardinal’s collection was still in the boat.

Plato.

Aristotle.

Menander.

Epictetus and Aeschylus. A play by a Greek named Phrynichus, who had witnessed the fall of Miletus. A hundred poems by Sappho. The sayings of Heraklitus. A work on mathematics by Pythagoras.

Even as Swan watched, the Venetian ship gathered speed – and the two ropes towing the small boat began to skew her course.

He was still considering making the jump when Alessandro’s strong right arm pinned him to the gunwale. ‘No you don’t, you fool!’ Alessandro shouted.

Swan squirmed.

The bow of the little boat buried itself in a wave.

Almost instantly, the boat filled – just as a sailor cut the tow. The rowing boat tipped once, took another wave directly under Swan’s eyes – and sank.

The sacks – leather sacks, carefully tied – floated for a few moments. Long enough for Peter to seize a marine’s partisan, lean far out over the stern, and catch one. It hung from the point of the spear for a long moment, and the spear caught the last of the sun – and then Peter whipped the spear up over his head with all his strength, and the bag, flung as if by a trebuchet, passed over the stern and landed in the middle of the ship.

And before the Turkish galleys passed them, the rest of the bags sank into the waters of the Bosporus.

Swan watched them all sink. He stood there, at the stern rail, as the Turkish arrows fell around him, until Alessandro came and pulled him away. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘You did well. The cardinal never expected us to save his library. The actors are more important.’

‘They are?’

‘Some day perhaps the cardinal will tell us why.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘Or perhaps they are people, and the scrolls are just the words of dead men.’

Swan met his eyes. ‘You don’t really believe that.’

Alessandro shrugged. ‘I stand with Ser Marco. I wouldn’t give the life of one Arsenali for a lost book by that faker, Aristotle. Or Plato the hypocrite.’ He shrugged.

Swan was watching the Turks. ‘They’re losing the race,’ he said.

Alessandro smiled. ‘There’s no ship on these waters as fast as a Venetian galley,’ he said.

Half an hour later, Swan collapsed to the deck and slept.

He woke in the night with the sort of headache he associated with drunkenness, and drank some water. Ser Marco was still with the helmsman. They were racing along, their big sail set and drawing.

Swan was diffident. He’d learned that the Venetian captain didn’t like to be interrupted on the command deck, even though it was the best place to stand on the ship, so he leaned over the rail forward of the helmsman’s station and watched the vaguely phosphorescent water race by.

‘Too tired to sleep?’ Ser Marco asked.

‘Yes, messire. Tired and thirsty. A little ill.’ Swan shrugged.

Ser Marco’s remaining teeth glittered in the moonlight when he smiled. He was missing all four in the centre, and it made him look sinister. ‘Overexertion, young man. I gather I owe you my life?’

Swan smiled. ‘Messire Claudio did the surgery. I merely pinned down a blood vessel.’

Ser Marco nodded. ‘I am grateful – but many men have saved my life over the years.’ He looked away.

Swan decided a change of topic was in order. ‘Where are we?’ he asked. When Ser Marco paused, he said, ‘I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to be bothered on the deck.’

Ser Marco grinned his demonic grin, and beckoned. ‘Come, young master. Join me on the sacred wooden boards of the command platform.’

The helmsman gave him a distracted nod. The man’s head was clearly somewhere else.

Ser Marco waved. ‘See the lights?’

Swan was about to protest that he didn’t see anything but a handful of stars, and then he saw them – a cluster of pinpricks, more yellow than white, and what had to be a fire.

‘I see them.’ He leaned out over the water, as if being a few handspans closer would make a difference.

‘That’s the isle of Marmora. They trade in marble. It has several good ports.’ Ser Marco motioned again. ‘Lean well out and look carefully astern.’

Swan suited his actions to the capitano’s words. He watched for a long time, and saw nothing but the faintest glow far astern.

He didn’t want to give up – the capitano was a man who loved to present a puzzle, as Swan knew from months of serving under him, and the young were expected to provide answers. Then he looked at the sea. Much, much closer than the dark horizon.

There were ships only a few hundred paces astern. They could only really be seen by the bow waves they cast.

‘Blessed Saint George,’ Swan said as he straightened up.

‘And Saint Mark,’ said Ser Marcos, tugging his beard.

‘I thought . . . I thought we were faster?’ Swan said carefully.

Ser Marco nodded. ‘I thought so, too. I’ve seen the flash of oars. I think they are rowing at night to increase their speed. Their rowers will be exhausted in the morning. They’ll have to try for us early – at dawn. Or even before.’ He shook his head. ‘They must be very desperate. Or someone hates us very much.’

Swan winced.

‘Best get some sleep. When they prepare to lay us aboard, I’ll call. You may trust my word on that.’ Ser Marco touched his shoulder.

Swan shook his head. He had the uneasy feeling that all of this was his fault.

He lay down and slept.

Morning. He woke muddle headed, and at first he couldn’t imagine where he was. His back hurt, and he lay on his side on the wooden deck with nothing under him but his rolled cloak and his right arm, which was half asleep.

He thought of Khatun Bengül.

He started to smile, and he realised that the ship’s drummer was just preparing to play the alarm. Men were already arming – half the Arsenali were shrugging into armour, those who had it. The rest guzzled water or wine. The marines were all looking to their arrows.

He raised his head off the deck, and thoughts of love were banished. A hundred paces astern, he could see the long, low shape of Omar Reis’s ship, and another hundred paces astern of her, two more Turkish galleys.

‘Good Christ,’ he said to Peter, who handed him a cup of wine.

Peter nodded. ‘I very much like your Turkish bow,’ he said. ‘I think you may want it.’

It lay atop his armour, with a quiver full of arrows.

The drum began to beat ‘To Arms’.

The tales of Tom Swan will be continued – if enough readers want them – in Tom Swan and the Conqueror’s Ring – in which Tom, against his better judgement, will return to Constantinople to find the lost ring of Alexander – and to buy a whole city for the Pope. And perhaps end a war. Or maybe just start one.

Also by Christian Cameron

Also by Christian Cameron and available as Orion ebooks:

The Tyrant Series

War, death and glory are in abundance in this action-packed series of betrayal and revenge set around, and beyond, the reign of Alexander the Great.

Tyrant

Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

Tyrant: Funeral Games

Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

The Killer of Men Series

Follow Arimnestos, a slave of Thebes, as he breaks his chains to join one of the greatest conflicts in the history of the world – the epic clash between the Greeks and Persians

Killer of Men

Marathon

Poseidon’s Spear

Other Novels

The ultimate historical adventure novel: the life of Alexander the Great in a single, epic volume.

Alexander: God of War

Copyright

An Orion eBook

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books

This eBook first published in 2012 by Orion Books

Copyright © Christian Cameron 2012

The moral right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 4091 2737 6

Orion Books

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

London WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Content

Cameron Christian Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople