Christian Cameron

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

The coast of the Morea rolled by, an endless succession of small, excellent harbours cut into tawny rock by the ancient gods of the sea.

The Blessed Saint John cut the water like the slim predator she was, and her oarsmen grunted softly as they pulled the stroke. There was no wind, and after a winter’s voyage from Ancona, wherein the ship was forced to avoid the Venetian possessions in Dalmatia, no wind was taken as a favourable sign by every man aboard.

Thomas Swan, Donat of the Order of Saint John, stood in his short frowzy brown gown by the tiller of the galley and listened to his mentor in all things nautical. A rich Genoese merchant-Messire Drappiero-had taken over the stern cabin, and Fra Tommaso, the captain, had responded by staying on his quarterdeck at all hours. They’d been at sea nineteen days — mostly passing their nights in secluded coves or on icy, windswept beaches, but they’d spent four nights at sea, as well, and Swan had been on deck almost as often as the old man.

It was rather like learning to ride from the Turks. The flow of information was endless, and the expertise of the teacher unquestioned. Swan tried to learn what he could. The cross-staff made sense to him. Constructing a memory palace based on biblical verses to memorise the costal marks was a little more difficult. Attempting to keep the tiller perfectly straight so that he didn’t leave a notch in his wake while the oarsmen toiled away …

‘Notch in your wake,’ the old man said. ‘Have you tried prayer?’

Swan was briefly tempted to tell the old man where he could put his prayer. He hadn’t slept in three days. He didn’t know where the old man got his reserves of energy, but for himself, he was ready for a cup of wine and a woman.

‘Notch in your wake,’ the old man said. ‘Try saying the paternoster. You know it, don’t you?’ the old man asked, and laughed.

He has me pegged, Swan thought bitterly.

He set his shoulders, put the tiller in what he fancied was the best place on his hip, and began reciting the paternoster in his head.

‘Try out loud,’ the old bastard said.

Swan prayed out loud.

‘Now say your whole length of beads. Aloud,’ Fra Tommaso said.

‘Beads?’ Swan asked.

Fra Tommaso guffawed. ‘Here, try mine. You really are the spawn of Satan, are you not?’

The knight’s beads were simple globes of wood strung on plain black linen. His cross at the end was brass. Swan took the beads.

‘Say a paternoster for each bead,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Notch. In your wake. Look at it. Every time you do that, it costs every man on this ship a little more effort to row the ship back on course. That’s why there is a helmsman. I’ll spare you the allegory. Pray. Out loud.’

Swan began to pray. There was something about the old knight that kept him at it. Perhaps he just hated the pious hypocrite enough to stay with him all day.

Perhaps.

After seven beads, he realised that the knight was no longer on the deck. He fought a vague panic. He’d never been left alone before.

He went back to praying. Out loud.

When the timoneer came and saluted and turned the hourglass, he was on his second time through the beads. He smiled and nodded.

His hips hurt, his hands hurt, and the muscles in his forearms were beyond simple words like ‘hurt’.

By the time he’d said the beads four times, his lower back hurt.

The old knight reappeared like something mechanical, popping up the stern ladder despite a heavy wool robe and a breastplate. He looked at the wake and nodded.

‘That was half a watch,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen worse, boy. Go and have a rest. Don’t use the cabin — our guest is having a fit.’

Swan was not too proud to bend over in public and try to stretch his back. ‘Sweet Jesu — sorry. My back is sore.’

‘Wait a day or two,’ the old man said.

‘Why is Master Drappierro upset?’ Swan asked.

‘He just discovered that when I said I was going to Monemvasia, I meant it,’ the old man said.

Swan risked the after-cabin to get a stool.

‘Do you think the old cretin who commands this vessel is affronting me on purpose, young man? Can you convince him to move us along? Monemvasia? We could make Piraeus in two days. Speak to him, please, my boy.’

These were the first civil words that the man had spoken to him, and Swan was not moved to help, but he nodded as agreeably as he could manage.

He sketched a bow. ‘I’ll make every effort,’ he said.

Drappierro held out a cup of wine. ‘And get me some more wine,’ he said. He paused and raised his head. ‘Please?’

Swan rewarded his attempt with the whole leather cask from the sideboard. He poured the merchant’s cup half full — patted himself on the back for spilling none in the short, choppy sea — and placed the leather keg by Drappierro’s elbow.

The Genoese grunted.

Swan went below into the gloom of the oar deck. The leather covers, intended to keep the icy spray off the oarsmen, were up, and the wind whistled through the oar holes. He went forward past the Genoese ambassador’s party, who were frozen and bitterly unhappy nearest the stern — past all the oarsmen, who had their chests under their benches, complete with coats of carefully oiled mail and broad-brimmed helmets and heavy axes arranged for instant access. Farther forward were the order’s mercenaries, a dozen for Monemvasia and another handful for distant Kos, paid for by the Duke of Burgundy. Beyond them were a handful of tiny cabins, no bigger than a man’s sea chest, where the standing officers — the carpenter and the timoneer and the deck master — all slept. Antoine had very wisely slung a hammock between two of the tiny cabins — doorpost to doorpost — getting for himself a fairly snug space almost four by eight feet.

Swan nodded to Antoine, who looked pained and rolled out of his hammock. ‘Your worship?’ he whined.

‘Stop calling me that,’ Swan insisted. He climbed into Antoine’s warm hammock and went to sleep. Antoine had no duties and no stations, so he slept all the time, or that was what Swan told himself. The truth was that galleys weren’t built for the crew to sleep aboard, and when they had to, men came to blows over sleeping space.

When Swan awoke he could feel the difference in the ship’s motion, and when he went on deck he saw that they were close inshore.

The old knight nodded, eyes and teeth pale in the wintery darkness. ‘You are becoming a sailor,’ he said. ‘You woke when I changed course.’

Swan shrugged and shivered.

Monemvasia towered over them. Some men called it the Gibraltar of Greece, and in truth the rock rose like a pillar of basalt from the angry sea, three hundred yards from shore. Viewed from the deck of a galley, the place looked impregnable.

‘It has never fallen to a siege,’ the old knight said.

He got them in to the quay with the skill of hundreds of repetitions, despite a rising wind and a following sea — the oars came in like the folding wings of a landing bird, and the ship bumped the wooden posts of the pier no harder than a child might hit another child with a stick.

Fra Domenico embraced him on the quay and held up his hand to examine his ring. The magnificent diamond still glittered on his own hand. ‘You delivered my messages?’ he asked.

‘Yours and the town fathers’,’ Swan said. ‘Cardinal Bessarion assigned some of the Duke of Burgundy’s crusade tithe to supporting the town. He says that if he is Pope, he will take the town under his mantle.’

‘And until then we can whistle in the wind?’ Fra Domenico asked.

Fra Tommaso raised an eyebrow. ‘I brought the men, but the word in Ancona is that the Grand Turk will try for Rhodos in the spring, and we’ll all be called home.’

‘That’s the word here, too,’ Domenico said. ‘I’ll be ready — nor will the soldiers go to waste.’

Swan stood by while Drappiero, the Genoese merchant-and ambassador-was introduced. He was respectful and courteous to Fra Domenico. Swan saw the Genoese notice the knight’s ring, too. The man started. His head turned as if he might say something, and then his jaw snapped shut.

That night he ate good white bread and beef, and drank good wine in the hospitaller preceptory behind the hospital. He sat with Fra Domenico and Fra Tommaso, and Peter waited on him. The Genoese party went straight to an inn.

After dinner, the two older men went off to the hospital and left him with Peter, who embraced him for perhaps the third time.

‘I might haf to tink differnt of you,’ he said. ‘You were commink back for me.’

Peter led him out into the town, which was a quarter the size of Ancona. They met Brother Totten, who rolled his serving brother’s gown up and stowed it in a wooden box by the gate.

‘You are allowed out?’ Swan asked.

The old Englishman laughed. ‘It’s no crime to the order if I have a drink,’ he said. ‘There’s sins in Monemvasia, but not so many we need to watch ourselves so hard.’

Swan introduced Antoine, and the four men played cards in a small room above an open yard where wine was served to men — and only men.

Peter nodded across his cards. ‘One hears you are married,’ he said.

Swan nodded. ‘Not really. But I might. I … love her.’

Peter made a non-committal noise and took a toothpick out of his eating-knife sheath. ‘Twenty-four points,’ he said.

Swan paid up with an ill grace. ‘Now you are better than me, too!’ he complained after losing three times.

‘You haf only yourself to blame,’ Peter said. ‘You left me here with Messire Totten.’

Totten had been talking with the taverna keeper, but he leaned over and broke into a great smile. ‘Let me lighten your load,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy a pitcher of wine, and you can try and find Lady Fortuna.’ He shuffled the cards carefully and took a seat. ‘Who’s the rich bastard on your galley?’

Swan scratched under his chin. ‘Francesco Drappierro. Richer than Croesus. No sense of humour at all. I hope he gets his pocket picked.’

Totten shrugged. ‘My friend in the taverna says he just asked the innkeeper for a Turkish girl.’ He shrugged again. ‘No Turkish girls here.’

The words ‘Turkish girl’ conjured such an image that Swan flushed, but he fought the image down and went back to the cards.

‘Speaking of Turks,’ Swan said. ‘No attacks?’

Totten shook his head. ‘There was fighting in the north, near Corinth. And the Albanians are threatening to revolt — again. You know the Katakuzenos family?’

Swan shook his head. ‘Should I?’ he asked wearily. It was like learning to navigate.

‘They were the lords of the Morea — oh, a hundred years ago. Not long after Agincourt, they … well, some of them died, they lost some battles, and the family ceased to be as important and the Paleologi took the whole Morea.’ Totten’s shrug indicated that this was an extremely truncated version of a longer story. ‘But — for various reasons — the Vlachs and the Albanians prefer the Katakuzenoi to the Paleologi.’

Swan leaned back. ‘You’re making this up.’

Totten laughed. ‘You asked! This is why no one crusades in Greece. Too many sides.’

Swan nodded. ‘Which side is the right side?’ he asked.

Totten shrugged. ‘No one here is much better than anyone else,’ he said. ‘At any rate, there was a battle a month ago — the Albanians lost to Thomas Palaeologos, who had Turks in his army, even though he hates them.’

‘Really, it’s just like Italy,’ Swan said.

‘Or France,’ admitted Antoine.

‘Or Flanders,’ said Peter bitterly.

‘It would never happen in England, thank God and Saint George,’ said Totten. ‘Nothing wrecks a country like a long civil war.’

Later they played with some of the Burgundian archers bound for Kos, and Peter arranged himself and Antoine a comfortable berth. Comfortable compared to lying on a bare deck, at any rate.

The weather turned for the worse, and they were nine days in Monemvasia. Swan grew tired of the wine, and found chastity a heavier burden in a town with dozens of young women than it had been at sea. And his bond with Violetta notwithstanding, he dreamed of Khatun Bengul almost every night, to his own mortification.

However, two sunny days and certain astrological signs that the captain understood had them at sea on the tenth day. They ran down the Aegean, touched at Hermione for wood and water, then across the great bay to Attica, visible all day as they sailed without touching an oar. They were in Athens for two days while Francesco Drappierro visited the Duke of Athens on his acropolis. Swan wandered through the wreckage of the lower town and purchased more than a dozen items from hawkers on the waterfront in Piraeus, including a matched pair of heavy gold rings with seals. He purchased coins, more weapons green with verdigris and a helmet — the best one he could find.

When Drappierro delayed another day, Swan rented a horse and rode north with Antoine and Peter for company. The farmland to the north and east of Athens was excellent, and there was a neat patchwork of hedged fields — wheat and barley ready for the late harvest. It made Swan a little homesick for England.

They crossed the plain and then, in a single long afternoon, climbed the great ridge that dominated the coast and came scrambling down to the small fishing village on the far side.

‘We came to see this?’ Peter said. ‘Are there girls?’

Swan rode along the beach and through the olive trees for several miles. Eventually he saw a Greek priest. The man seemed in no hurry to speak to a Frank, but Swan spoke passable Greek and the man smiled under his heavy beard.

‘I thought you might be another Florentine overseer,’ he said. ‘They sell these lands so fast — the Italians, I mean. How can I help you?’

Swan nodded. ‘Is this Marathon?’ he asked.

The priest nodded soberly. ‘Ah — a scholar. Come with me.’ He fetched a mule tied to a post outside a farmhouse, and led them down the plain.

‘See the little hill, like a pot turned upside down?’ the priest said, and after a moment Swan could see it.

‘My house is just the other side,’ the priest said. ‘But I think the little hill is the tomb. Where the Athenians buried their dead.’

Peter rolled his eyes as Swan reacted with passionate enthusiasm. They rode down the valley, chattering — Swan trying to understand the rapid Greek, the priest trying to be plain spoken.

‘Find us a place to drink, or we’ll ride off and leave you,’ the Fleming said.

Swan indicated his escort. ‘My men need a place to drink.’ He frowned. ‘They don’t share my enthusiasm for the past.’

The priest nodded with complete understanding. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My wife neither.’

Back aboard ship, Swan lost no time in laying his prizes out on the table in the main cabin. He had a small blank book he’d acquired in Ancona, and he began to make notes of the things he bought.

Fra Tommaso appeared at the door. ‘Our guest is returning,’ he said. ‘What on earth is that?’

Swan shrugged. ‘A marble phallus. A man’s penis. No idea what it was for.’

The old knight shook his head. But he picked up an ornate helmet with cheek plates that still moved on their hinges and put it on his head. It sat on his wool cap.

‘Good vision,’ he said. ‘How old is this?’

Swan shrugged again. But he was happy to have the knight’s interest, and he stood up, cracking his head on the deck beams and subsiding while the knight laughed.

‘Some day, I’ll make a sailor of you,’ he said.

‘I think it’s from before Christ. Before Rome. There was a great battle at Marathon that set Athens on her road to greatness — at least, that’s what Herodotus says. I went there. I bought the helmet from the priest.’

‘I like it,’ said the knight. ‘The time of Troy!’

Swan smiled. ‘Near enough,’ he said. He’d learned that, like convincing adults of his innocence, teaching people about the complications of history was largely a waste of his time.

Drappierro poked his head in through the door. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in his deadpan voice, and then he saw the helmet. ‘But it is magnificent!’ he exclaimed.

Fra Tommaso handed it to him silently, and the man all but glowed. He ran his fingers over the fine web of embossed olive leaves and lions at the brow. ‘Please allow me to buy this from you,’ Drappierro said. Then he looked at the table. His fingers darted out and grabbed the matching seal rings.

‘Where did you find these?’ he asked.

Swan sat back comfortably. ‘I spent three days searching for them, messire.’

Drappierro looked at him, eyes narrowed. ‘Where?’ he asked.

Swan had played cards long enough to keep his face blank. ‘Near Athens,’ he said.

‘I’ll take them — and the helmet. What’s this?’ he said, putting a hand on the phallus and then pulling it away as if burned. ‘Obscene! And the rest of this is junk.’

He began to admire the seals. Then he dropped them in his purse.

Swan thought, And they call me a thief! ‘Messire needs to purchase them if he desires them so strongly.’

Drappierro flicked his fingers. ‘Talk to my staff. I do not deal in domestic matters.’

Swan leaned forward, slapped a hand on the table, and with the ease of long practice, slipped Drappierro’s purse off its hook while the man was watching his other hand. He withdrew his rings, took his helmet off the table, and bowed.

‘When you have negotiated a price and paid it, you may have these items, messire, and not until then. I collect for the Pope and several cardinals and the — ’ he hoped his hesitation didn’t show — ‘the Duke of Milan.’

Drappierro shot to his feet and fetched his head a staggering blow against the deck beams. He fell, almost unconscious.

Swan took the moment to sweep the rest of his acquisitions into a bag. He was tempted to empty the Genoese man’s purse, but he managed to resist. He tossed it on the table with a healthy clink and went on deck.

The second leg of their voyage was far more comfortable than the first, mostly because Peter had arranged for deck space among the Burgundian archers, and Swan slept both warm and well between Antoine and Peter. Antoine was as welcome with the archers as Peter — even more so when he made them bread in a hastily rigged clay oven on an open beach not far from where the Persian fleet failed to defeat the Greek fleet at Artemesium. The Genoese ambassador had a stop to make on Naxos, and Swan again visited the market and bought coins and a dagger.

A day out of Naxos, he was playing chess with the captain on the quarterdeck. The day was fine, and it seemed possible that spring was not so very far away. The Genoese ambassador came on deck, climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck as if he owned it, and stood watching the sea. He leaned on the rail and watched the game for a dozen moves.

‘I do want to buy those pieces,’ he said without preamble. ‘Cyriaco collected for me. He never charged me. I assumed you were working for him.’ The man’s voice was mild. ‘I apologise for my apparent theft.’

Swan shot to his feet and swept his best bow. ‘I knew that a gentleman of your distinction would be under some misapprehension,’ he said.

‘How much for the helmet and the rings?’ Drappierro asked. Then, his expression slipping, he said, ‘You haven’t already sold them?’

Swan wanted to laugh aloud. How did this man rise to greatness in Genoa? he asked himself. He wears his heart on his face! He rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll sell you both rings and the helmet for two hundred ducats, messire.’

Drappierro nodded. ‘Done. See my chamberlain. See? I am not so unreasonable. When you have been paid, kindly bring them to me. Are we satisfied?’

Swan nodded. ‘Completely so, messire.’ He tried not to roll his eyes.

Drappierro’s chamberlain was a Phokaian Greek called Katzou. He shrugged at the news and opened a small chest and emptied it into Swan’s hat. He made no complaint, checked no document and asked for no validation, and Swan briefly considered a life of crime, but reminded himself that he would be trapped aboard the galley with his victims.

He carried the antiquities to the main cabin, knocked and took them to Drappierro, who sat as he always did at the main table as if he, and not Fra Tommaso, was the captain of the vessel.

‘Ah!’ he said, looking up. His eyes held the kind of lust that Swan associated with old men and much younger women. He snatched the rings from Swan’s hand, looked at them for three deep breaths, and then took the helmet.

Swan turned to go. At the rate of profit, a few more finds sold to Messire Drappierro would allow him to settle comfortably in Ancona and make babies with Violetta. He didn’t need the man to be polite — merely to pay.

‘Wait — Messire Suani.’ The Genoese ambassador raised his hand. ‘I am an abrupt man — I know it. But I see you have taste and some training — hence your friendship with Cyriaco. So — you saw the knight of the order at Monemvasia?’

Drappierro’s abrupt conversational direction changes left Swan gasping like a fish. But he did his best, recovered and bowed.

‘Your Excellency no doubt refers to Fra Domenico?’ he asked.

Drappierro waved. ‘That sounds right. A notorious pirate, albeit one who tends to favour my city.’

Swan nodded carefully.

‘Young man, did you happen to note what the knight wore on his finger?’ asked Drappierro.

Swan pursed his lips and decided on honesty. ‘A ring. Very early — possibly Hellenistic. The gem is a diamond.’

Drappierro looked at him. It was the first time they had met eye to eye — Drappierro’s gaze burned like the look of a religious fanatic at devotions. ‘A diamond, you say?’ he said. ‘Why do you think so?’

Swan eased himself into the cushioned seats against the stern windows. The winter sun reflected off the sea and on to the gleaming white ceiling of the cabin. The heavy deck beams were painted black and red in alternating succession, and the effect with the sun-dapple was stark and beautiful.

Drappierro hadn’t invited him to sit, but Swan was not interested in standing like a servant for this man.

‘I’ve held it in my hand,’ Swan said.

Drappierro leaned forward. ‘You have? Tell me of it in detail.’

Swan smiled. ‘First, it is called “The Ring of the Conqueror”,’ he said. ‘It is Alexander’s signet ring.’

Drappierro became so red in the face that Swan was afraid the man was going to have a seizure. ‘Messire? Do you need water?’

Drappierro leaned back. ‘I have heard of this thing. How do you know it is the real ring?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I do not know. But Fra Domenico believes it is, as did the Turkish corsair from whom he took it.’

‘By the saints — he had it from Khaireddin,’ Drappierro said. ‘It is the ring.’ His slightly mad eyes met Swan’s. ‘What’s carved in the jewel?’

‘Herakles,’ Swan said, in Greek. ‘His head, anyway!’

Drappierro sighed. ‘Why didn’t I stop and look at it? Listen, Messire Suani. The Grand Turk wants that ring. Very badly. If I could give it to him, I could get any treaty I wanted. Perhaps even reclaim some of my losses from the infidel.’

‘Swan, messire. I am English.’ Swan nodded agreeably. ‘I suspect the knight would sell it — for a substantial sum. I heard him mention ten thousand ducats.’

Drappierro frowned. ‘I will consider this. The man who brought me that ring would be … my friend.’ He settled his mad eyes on Swan. ‘In the East, my friends prosper. Cyriaco recommended you to me. See what you can do.’

Swan decided that this had gone far enough — although he was intrigued. ‘I am merely a soldier of the order,’ he said.

‘Save it for the knights,’ Drappierro said. ‘I know what you are. I saw you take my purse.’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. ‘How about that wife of yours, in Ancona?’

Swan had been caught in too many lies to fall easily for such stuff. ‘What’s that, messire? I’m afraid I do not understand.’

‘I think you understand me very well, Englishman. Fra Diablo will come out to Rhodos this summer. You get the ring, and bring it to me, and I will see to it that your fortune is made. Or — fail me, and see what happens.’

‘You want me to steal a valuable ring from a knight of my own order?’ Swan said, standing up carefully and raising his voice.

Drappierro grew red in the face.

Swan slipped out from behind the table. ‘I’ll pretend I never heard that,’ he said, with all the outraged innocence that a bastard son of a Southwark whore could learn to muster in a childhood spent in taverns, brothels and the English court. He stalked to the cabin door and slammed it on his way out.

He went and finished his chess game. Fra Tommaso raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

East of Delos, they finally paid the price of sailing in winter. The blow came off Africa, full of sand, and then, without warning, the wind shifted through half the compass and blew off Thrace, and came full of snow. The Burgundians laughed — at first. They helped clear the snow away, and the sailors laughed and played in it until it began to clog the rigging and all the blocks, and then the ropes began to freeze, and darkness fell. The big lateen sail was shortened twice, and then taken in altogether, and they ran downwind towards Africa with the whole weight of the Thracian storm under their stern, and Tom Swan had his first experience of staying on deck and on duty until his knees wouldn’t hold him. For hours, he and the old knight were lashed to the tiller, a heavy linen tarpaulin impregnated with red lead and linseed oil wrapped around them with two old wool blankets, the whole thing flapping in the wind.

The morning of the fourth day crept up on wolf’s feet, the grey enveloping the ship so slowly that they were shocked to find how much they could see before a long squall hit and blinded them again, and pushed the long, slim ship over on its beam ends for so long that Swan, standing in water and the whole weight of his body against the starboard rail, thought the ship was lost.

They righted, the central deck full of water, and the oarsmen made a desperate attempt to bail. Men were soaked, and cold, and the wind was unrelenting.

The old knight rose to the challenge, calling orders into the waist of the ship and being obeyed. As the wind slackened towards noon, he called for more sail, and they slanted away to the west.

By nightfall, Antoine had a small fire going amid the stinking sand of the forward bilge, where galleys lit fires in times of dire need. The sand stank because in storms men feared to relieve themselves over the side, and did their business in the sand of the hold — despite a thousand orders to the contrary.

But Antoine’s special talent was his ability to light a fire in any weather, and he added bits of wood salvaged from the storm — a broken chest, a fractured stool — to the firewood kept for just such moments. Then he produced a pair of copper pots and began to heat water, and served a hot concoction of malmsey wine, water, sugar and spices that raised spirits above the masthead. He went on making the concoction until the galley lumbered into Rhodos with two men dead of exposure and a badly sprung bow where the ship had hit a floating tree in the darkness of their last night. They were long since out of food, and the men were not exactly sober, but the ship glided down the long harbour, the oars frothed the water as they slowed, and Fra Tommaso, at the helm in person, put the ship alongside the quay as neatly as a whore hooking a customer at the fair.

Every oarsman and every sailor bent and kissed the stones of the quay as they disembarked.

Messire Drappierro stood on the quay in a dry wool gown and looked sour. ‘Now I’m days out of my way,’ he said. ‘I have no need to visit Rhodos.’

Fra Tommaso was supervising the unloading of the corpses of the men who’d died at sea. He glanced at the Genoese. ‘You and your entourage are welcome to catch a different ship,’ he said quietly. ‘I warned Your Excellency when you came aboard that no ship of the order would be welcome in the Golden Horn.’

‘And I told you not to be an old woman.’ Drappierro curled his lip. ‘I can see to such things.’

Fra Tommaso’s face remained unchanged. ‘Perhaps, but, as I am an old woman, it is not a risk I choose to run. There are two Genoese ships across the harbour. I’ll see to it that one of them takes you up the coast.’

Drappierro shrugged. To Katzou, he said, ‘Find an inn. Get our kit unloaded.’ He looked at Swan. ‘Don’t forget the ring,’ he said.

‘He’s insane,’ Swan said after the ambassador was gone.

The knight shook his head. ‘No. Merely full of a sense of his own power. Money and worldly power do this to men. They become … less than human. He cannot see a world beyond himself. It is sad — I knew him slightly as a younger man. He was a bold adventurer, a charming man. He made too much money, and now he sees himself …’ The knight caught himself.

‘By Saint John, young Englishman — that’s the effect that Drappierro has. I’m gossiping like a fishwife. He is what he is. Will you stay with my ship?’ he asked.

Swan was watching Drappierro. Bessarion had ordered him to watch the Genoese and work with him, but Bessarion had also asked him to visit Rhodos and Chios and Lesvos.

‘Are you still bound for Chios?’ he asked.

Fra Tommaso waved at a group of approaching knights. But he turned back to Swan. ‘I am. I may wait for the weather to break. Fancy a month on Rhodos?’

Swan thought of Violetta. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Will it be relaxing?’

After a month on Rhodos, Swan longed to return to sea. As a Donat, he rose every morning an hour before dawn, and walked out of the barracks with sixty other volunteers to exercise in the stone-flagged courtyard for an hour — lifting rocks and drawing bows and running like antic madmen. The first meal was dried bread and small beer, although Antoine could usually be counted on for an egg.

Some days, Swan drew various duties, all of which involved being mounted in full armour — patrolling walls, riding abroad on the island, or sitting with the knight on duty as tolls were levied or visiting merchants questioned. Winter still had the Ionia in its grip, but the traffic was already moving — the small traders who hopped from island to island never ceased business, and a month before Greek Easter, the bigger boats were moving, as well, with wares from Egypt, Turkey and Palestine.

The knights were not unnecessarily cruel to their Greek subjects, but neither were they the fatherly protectors that Bessarion imagined. The island’s Greek inhabitants paid a heavy tax for the ‘protection’ of the order — an order that they could not join. Swan, by virtue of his languages, was soon party to almost every property negotiation, and he saw the Greek gentry bridle at any suggestion that the knights should own more land. He heard the order referred to as ‘schismatics’ and ‘heretics’ by old women in the street. The island’s oldest icon sat in the hospitallers’ chapel where the natives could not revere it; the island’s cathedral church was Latin, not Greek.

On the other hand, the population had schools and fresh water, and paid lower taxes than most of their cousins under Turkish rule. When Swan was off duty, drinking in the taverns, he heard older Greeks admit that business was good. But he saw the young French knights treat Greeks as if they were the enemy.

The duty was not especially onerous, unless he had to spend two hours translating, but the ceaseless practice of arms was. Every day, with no exceptions, the knights, the Donats and all the mercenaries paraded at the castle, marched and formed into various formations, retreated and advanced, and then practised with weapons — one day, Swan cut at a pell with a short sword until he thought he’d been forgotten, over an hour, and his right shoulder hurt for days. Another time he was handed a poleaxe, a weapon he had never used, and instructed by a hectoring Neapolitan until he wanted to kill the patronising little bastard. A rail-thin Scottish knight instructed him at length about tilting and jousting. He hadn’t attempted to tilt since he was at court in England, but his riding skills had improved, and the Scotsman was a far better teacher than the Neapolitan.

As February turned to March, Swan saw the Blessed Saint John taken down to the frame and retimbered, with new decking and more than half of her planks replaced with fresh wood that shone nearly white against the older wood, now nearly black. Fencing with sword and buckler against Fra Tommaso, Swan commented on how good the ship looked.

‘She’s always been a beauty,’ Fra Tommaso agreed, obviously pleased that Swan could see his ship’s superiority. ‘That floating log hulled us badly. We’re lucky we made it into port, and luckier still that Master Shipwright has timber this year.’ He nodded at the knights. ‘Either the Turks are coming here, or we’re going for them. This is more men than I’ve seen in this yard since …’ He looked about. ‘Ever,’ he grunted, and set himself to trying to smash the small shield out of Swan’s resisting hand.

Daily practice had done much to allow Swan to distil some of the lessons he’d learned in unconnected pieces — from Messire Viladi, from Di Brachio, from the poem of Maestro Fiore he’d memorised. He’d learned a fair amount, but life on Rhodos allowed him to sort it out, practise it — and theorise.

He began to see what Maestro Fiore meant when he said that all things were the same in fighting, and that once you learned a set of techniques, it was ‘very, very easy’ to apply them to other weapons. This discovery came when, fencing with heavy blunted spears in full harness, he slapped his opponent’s spear-point to the earth and put his bated point into the other man’s visor hard enough to rock his head back. As his opponent was Fra Kenneth, the Scottish knight who taught him jousting — a veteran fighter with a vicious repertoire of elbows, knees, grapples and locks — Swan was proud of himself.

He’d used the technique without thinking, imitating something he’d learned from Maestro Viladi with the sword. Over the next four days he earned a reputation as a canny spear fighter.

Rhodos did have a few rewards to go with its litany of punishments. The order’s library was superb, and Swan sat and read medical texts and was praised for doing so. And he found that working in the hospital was almost pleasant. The building itself was big and airy and full of light, and the attitude of the serving brothers and sisters — and the rate of recovery of the patients, most of whom were foreign pilgrims — did a great deal to change Swan’s view of how medicine worked.

And the food was plenteous and mostly very good. Swan ate as much as he was allowed, and his appetite grew with each day of exercise, until the older knights would sit and laugh to watch him work his way through a great dish of mutton with saffron rice and raisins, a local favourite.

To his intense annoyance, he grew an inch in a sudden growth spurt, and his chest grew larger, so that his new, carefully fitted breast and back plate now fitted no better than his old one. He took it to the order’s armourer, who had a magnificent shop, and who refitted it to him in a day.

He looked longingly at the nuns. Chastity wasn’t in him, and twice in a month he drew sharp penances for his confessions — but they didn’t turn their heads, even the young, pretty ones.

The Blessed Saint John acquired her third and fourth coats of paint, and was declared ready for sea. After seventy days as a Donat, Swan had almost come to enjoy the life. He was certainly a better man-at-arms. He’d read some good books, seen some superb art, and by some alchemy he’d come to feel a part of the order, not just a wolf in another wolf’s clothing.

But he was not accomplishing his mission.

And he desperately wanted a girl. He tried his flirting skills on the Greek serving girls in the town — even on servants walking home from the dormitories.

Since Aphrodite had so effectively deserted him, he tried to find ways of passing the time that wasn’t spent in drilling, swordsmanship, spear fighting and wrestling. The library never failed to interest him, and the brother knights were always delighted if he took a turn in the hospital. The acting head of the English Langue — the order was organised by language — was Sir John Kendal, who was somewhat aloof, but seemed to put a mental check mark against Swan each time he washed sick men.

It was because of the hospital that he discovered his favourite part of the island.

Just before spring arrived, two men were brought in, both with multiple abrasions and broken bones. Swan was on duty in the ward and spoke Greek better than any of the other knights, and was summoned.

The two young Greeks were obviously terrified of the knights and of Swan. They lay in simple white wool gowns on clean linen sheets and were completely silent.

Swan sat down between them and waived Sir John away. Then, when they were alone, he spoke in good colloquial Greek. ‘How did this happen?’ he asked.

They looked at each other.

Swan looked over the younger man’s injuries — broken arm, broken leg, sand in every abrasion. ‘Did a house fall on you?’ he asked.

They looked at each other. He thought the other man reacted. Something in his eyes.

The slave who’d brought them in said, ‘Effendi, they were under the town.’

Swan nodded. ‘Under?’ he asked. ‘Go ahead — speak freely.’

‘Very well, Effendi. These unbelieving sons of whores were looting the ancient things under the town.’ The slave — a black African — shrugged, as if everyone knew this.

‘That’s a lie!’ sputtered the older Greek man. ‘I was trying to fix my privy.’

Swan leaned over and took a whiff. And shook his head. ‘Not unless the privy was very new indeed,’ he said.

The younger man’s pupils widened. ‘Please, my lord! We are poor men.’

Swan turned back to the slave. ‘Did they have a bag?’ he asked.

The slave smiled slowly, as if agreeing that Swan was not altogether a fool. ‘They did,’ he allowed.

‘What was in it, young man?’ Swan asked. He smiled a little using the term ‘young’. But as a member of the order, he was entitled to a little arrogance, he felt.

‘Either it was empty, in which case we will never get it back from the gate guards, or it was full of loot, in which case,’ the African smiled, ‘we will never get it back from the gate guards.’

‘Men after my own heart,’ Swan muttered. He was speaking Arabic to the slave, he discovered. ‘Can you take me to where they were found?’

‘The effendi must have noted that I am a slave,’ the black man said with a shrug. ‘I will await your pleasure.’ The man managed to say that in a way that suggested that the waiting gave him no pleasure and neither did service to a foreign infidel.

When Swan was done on the wards, he had the slave fetched.

‘I have waited for you for three hours,’ the slave complained.

‘During which, you were fed and did no work at all by my command,’ Swan said.

The two men looked at each other for a moment.

‘You have been a slave?’ the black asked carefully.

‘Only for a little while,’ Swan said.

‘Clearly the effendi learned some essential matters,’ the African said. ‘I am called Salim, here. Out there,’ he said, waving, ‘I am Mohamed.’

Swan nodded. ‘Call me Tommaso,’ he said. ‘Now show me where they were found.’

‘I can do better, if you pay me,’ the African said. ‘I can show you what the two fools didn’t know — how to reach the ancient city under the sewers.’

‘Are you a prisoner of war?’ Swan asked.

Salim nodded.

Together, they climbed an old house — really a tower, and probably more than a thousand years old. The inside was occupied by beggars who lived in the basement, and all the floors had fallen in and been salvaged for furniture, for room dividers, and even as firewood.

‘Can’t we go in by the door?’ Swan asked while climbing the sun-heated stone of the outer wall.

‘No,’ said the slave. He offered no further information.

Swan wondered whether he was being precipitate in trusting the man, and touched the needle-sharp rondel dagger at his waist. Just in case. They got over the old roof trees and then descended on ropes obviously there for the purpose.

There were other people living in the ruin, and the whole of the old tower was a chimney, so that they climbed down through a variety of cooking smells — onions, some meat, cardamom — all delicious.

Salim seemed to know the occupants, and he and Swan passed among them with only some murmurs. They went down into the old tower’s basement, and then along a short stone-lined corridor that stank of urine, and into an obvious cesspit.

‘Jesus!’ Swan spat.

Salim made a face. ‘Must you swear, Christian?’ he asked.

Swan would have laughed, but the stench made him retch.

The slave raised the hem of his kaftan and Swan pulled his gown tight against his body, and the two men edged along the least polluted wall and into another stinking corridor on the far side.

‘Did I fail to mention that the entry route is used as a set of privies?’ Salim asked with a wicked smile.

Swan grunted. ‘Did I fail to mention that I have a dagger and you do not?’ he asked idly, in Arabic. ‘Even a scratch would be septic, in this.’

‘Uhhnn.’ Salim nodded, not displeased.

While Swan contemplated the Arabic sense of humour, they passed six cesspits, each more odiferous and disgusting than the last, until they emerged into a dark chamber that stank only of cat piss. Swan lit an oil lamp, which guttered, as if the fumes ate the air. But the slave knew where there were lanterns and torches hidden in the rocks, and they made their way along an odd path — almost like a street, except that Swan could tell he was looking at shorings and foundations — heavy stone with an outward slope.

He stepped on something that bit at his foot. Examination under torchlight revealed a bronze arrowhead — light, and with a trilobite head. Swan had seen them before — at Marathon.

‘Persian!’ he said.

The black man shrugged. ‘If you say, Effendi. You are not expecting treasure, I hope.’

Swan smiled. ‘If there was a treasure …’ he said.

Salim raised a black eyebrow. ‘Yes?’ he asked, pausing. The torchlight rendered his face demonic.

‘You wouldn’t take me here at all,’ Swan said.

Salim laughed. ‘Sometimes there are coins. Arrowheads, such as the one you found. It was a great battle, the one the ancient men fought here before the Prophet, may his name be blessed, came to teach men the way of justice.’

‘How much farther does this go?’ Swan asked.

‘All the way to the-’ Salim seemed to catch himself. ‘Not much farther. Sometimes we find different tunnels-old streets. The old slaves say there is a tunnel cut in the rock-all the way under the walls to the south.’ He shrugged. ‘I have never seen it,’ he said.

Swan was increasingly conscious of being under the earth with a man as big as he was and every bit as dangerous. At the same time, he recognized the stone in the torchlight as marble-heavily veined grey marble. From ancient Greece.

‘It is fascinating,’ Swan said. ‘But I have to be at dinner in the hall. Shall we go back?’

‘Yes,’ Salim said, with some relief. He led the way, apparently unconscious of Swan’s careful movements behind him.

Spring came early in Greece. The flowers burst forth, so that the fields outside the town were like intricate Persian carpets, with tiny flowers each a different colour as far as the eye could see.

The first ship in from Italy brought news of a great peace. There was immense excitement in Rome, and Nicholas V, the Pope, was convening a great council to declare a crusade to rescue Constantinople.

Swan heard all this over a cup of wine. He walked quickly back to his barracks and found Fra Tommaso — only to have his bubble of militant Christian enthusiasm burst by the old man’s cynicism.

‘Peace between Sforza and Venice — certainly. I’d heard of it before we cleared Ancona,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Peace in Italy? I suppose it’s possible.’ He laughed. ‘A crusade? Honestly, young man, where do you get these notions? No one in Europe actually cares about the loss of Constantinople! The Italians want to make money, the French want to make war, the English … perhaps want to make beer. The Emperor, may his name be praised, is busy trying to make certain there won’t be a crusade, and trust me, that will be his view right up until Mehmet marches to the gates of Vienna.’

Swan sagged. ‘Oh.’

‘Listen, boy, you’ve been listening to all the Burgundians and the Frenchmen. They’re eager for a crusade. Good for them — it’s not their cargoes that the Turks will seize. But without a fleet — a fleet of both Venice and Genoa — there is no crusade. Eh?’

‘So now what happens?’ Swan asked. ‘We’re ready for sea.’ He thought of the awesome labyrinth under his feet, barely explored.

‘As to that — what happens now is that you and I take our ship down to Alexandria, to pay our loving respects to the Mamelukes, who are every bit as much Muslims as the Turks but are preferred by his Holiness. Understand?’ He laughed again.

‘No,’ Swan said.

‘Good. We’ll sail in the morning. Get your kit aboard.’ Fra Tommaso waved his hand.

Alexandria was everything that Swan thought a city should be. It was huge — unbelievably big, really, with so many different markets and bazaars that the Englishman wandered from morning until night while the order’s delegation met the Sultan and paid their respects — and some kind of secret tribute.

After a day as a Christian tourist, Swan decided to see the city as a co-religionist. He had the clothes — all his Turkish clothes had been with Peter, and he liked the idea of going as a Turk, which would prompt fewer questions about any accent there might be to his Arabic. He went ashore in his military gown and changed in the public privy behind the beachfront bazaar. He rolled his Christian clothes into a tight bundle and placed them in the bottom of the small leather bag he carried. Dressed as a Christian, every move he made would be reported.

Especially a visit to a brothel.

Dressed as a Turk, he wandered through the waterfront souk, waiting to be challenged. But no such thing took place. Instead, he received a great deal of fawning, and he developed a following of a crowd of small boys, whom he pleased by buying them sweets.

A woman took the sweets away from one boy and threw them in a pile of dung.

‘You know what the Turk wants you for,’ she spat in Arabic that he wasn’t supposed to understand.

The boys all fled.

Swan shook his head and continued through the string of markets.

Alexandria was a dream city — a city almost two thousand years old, and built for trade. The magnificent harbour was packed with Genoese and Venetian shipping, as well as a scattering of French ships and — of all things — an English ship, the Katherine Sturmy. He almost forgot his position as a Turk when he heard a man speak in English — and heard a woman answer him.

Swan walked away hurriedly lest he betray himself. After two turnings and crossing a broad thoroughfare, he was in yet another set of wandering alleys, no wider than his arm. Here the shops were mere awnings. And here were scraps of antiquities — a head of Aphrodite in marble, a seal carved in quartz, another in bloodstone. Swan eyed them all, collected a few and began to dicker with the owner.

He saw the man signal someone behind him, but made the mistake of assuming it was the signal to another seller.

He made a further error in taking his purse out of his leather bag — and disclosing the sum of ten gold ducats. But Swan was canny enough to see the change come over the dealer’s face, like tidal water covering the sands. He flinched and turned — and saw the stick.

He ducked, and took the blow high on his left arm, and let out a startled squeal of pure pain.

He got his right hand on his dagger, and in so doing lost his purse. The silk bag landed and opened, and a gold ducat rolled out.

There were six of them, at least.

A club struck his shoulder. The left arm was numb, but the man lingered too long and Swan kicked him in the groin with the whole weight of his foot.

His life was saved by the second man’s greed. Instead of killing him, the man had knelt to pick up the coin. A third man, tall and black, swung a pole or a spear at his head and Swan tried to back up a step and fell over the kneeling man. On instinct, he rammed his dagger into another footpad’s shin. The man screamed. Swan got a hand on his belt and the same motion that pulled Swan to his feet helped him put the other man on the ground.

He took a blow on his back that hurt like fire, and riposted with a sweeping dagger blow that dropped the tall African, at least temporarily. The others backed away and Swan, his left arm tingling, picked up one of the abandoned clubs. He menaced the pedlar with his dagger and swept the seal stones into his leather bag — the purse would have to stay on the ground.

His eyes went left, then right. He pivoted, and looked over his shoulder.

The pedlar rolled the table over on him. He leaped back, and the man shrieked, ‘A Turk! A Turk! A Turk has raped my son!’

When a somewhat bedraggled Swan went back aboard his galley — he’d run through half of Alexandria, and taken several hard blows — he cleaned up and found himself summoned to the stern cabin to translate for his captain.

Fra Tommaso met him on the main deck. The rowers — all professionals — were ashore, behaving like oarsmen, and Swan, whose ribs ached, wished he had chosen to join them.

‘You have two remarkable black eyes,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘You speak English, I gather.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Swan could barely think. He’d survived the encounter by not using his weapon again and by running — apparently the right tactic when set upon by six men and an angry mob. His stolen gemstones were safe below, but he’d lost the dagger and all the trinkets he’d purchased earlier in the day as well as the ten ducats he’d carried.

He’d learned that Egyptians hated Turks. Probably more than they hated Christians.

‘The English ship is making trouble,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘I want you to explain to them.’

As it proved, the English ship was making trouble merely by existing, and the Genoese wanted to storm it and kill the entire crew. A very voluble Genoese officer, who was never introduced, stormed and raged at the English merchant, Messire Richard Sturmy. Sturmy stood silently with his hands behind his back like an errant schoolboy. Swan liked him immediately.

The Genoese didn’t offer a point of view or a legal quibble. He merely made threats — threat after threat, so fast Swan could scarcely keep up.

‘Tell this sodomite that if his wife and child are aboard, I’ll rape them and sell them to the Turks. Tell him-’ The Genoese found it hard to speak with Fra Tommaso’s hand over his mouth.

‘That is one threat you will not make on my ship, messire,’ Fra Tommaso said quietly.

Swan had waited patiently through a long and vicious harangue. Now he turned to Messire Sturmy.

‘I am English,’ he said. ‘I am a Donat of the order. Thomas Swan.’ He offered his hand.

Sturmy seized it the way a drowning man might seize a log. ‘Blessing to God and Saint George, my friend! An Englishman! Here!’ He embraced Swan. ‘These … foreigners — I can’t understand ’em. My shipman can, but he says we’re forbidden to trade here — which is cant! I have a letter from the King! And another letter from the Sultan!’ He grinned at Swan and seemed to take him in for the first time. ‘By the gentle saviour, lad, someone used you as a pell!’

Swan read the letters quickly. He turned to his knight. ‘Sir — the Englishman has a letter signed by the King of England appointing him an ambassador. And the King of England has the agreement of the Signory and of the Republic to allow this ship to trade on the Levant.’ He handed the letter to Fra Tommaso. ‘And, sir, he has a letter from the Sultan. The Mameluke Sultan Al Ashraf.’

Fra Tommaso raised an eyebrow. He turned to the Genoese. ‘He has letters — even from your republic.’

‘Any whore can get such a letter. Tell him to leave or I kill him and his ship.’ The Genoese leered.

‘You are not the best advertisement for your republic — you know that, eh?’ Fra Tommaso said.

‘I do not ask for your opinion, Fra Tommaso!’ the Genoese said. ‘Genoa does not support the knights so that they may banter about the news. Rid us of these interlopers!’

Bits of the merchant’s spittle flecked Swan’s doublet.

Swan rarely thought of himself as an Englishman. He thought of himself … as himself. As friends with a handful of men and women to whom he was loyal. As one of Bessarion’s men.

But the Genoese made him feel like an Englishman, and he was tempted to do the Genoese a harm.

He read over the letters. ‘Messire Sturmy, this man is determined to be rid of you, and he commands the Genoese shipping here — or has the power to make his commands felt. Would you consider trading up the coast of Syria? Perhaps with the Turks?’

Sturmy laughed. ‘I’d be happy to do so, Sir Knight, but I was told those waters were …’ He turned and looked at the Genoese man. ‘… full of pirates.’

‘What do you trade?’ Swan asked.

Sturmy counted on the tips of his fingers. ‘Lead. I have lead in the holds as ballast, but it is worth a mint here — they don’t have any. And hides. I have some tallow — all the way from the Russias — and wool, of course. Our own wool,’ he added, as if Swan would have believed that another country might export wool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘For Genoa,’ Swan said piously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chastity pained him like alum on an open cut.

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

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

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

‘How bad is it?’ Swan asked.

Fra Tommaso shrugged and spat downwind.

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

Swan went to sharpen his sword.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swan laughed. ‘Thanks for the mastic.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Have you seen them?’ Swan asked.

‘Of course!’ the Greek answered.

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

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

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

‘At a very good price,’ he added.

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

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

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

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

Which proved to be altogether in their favour.

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

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

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

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

‘The Turks,’ Fra Tommaso said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Yes, sir,’ Swan answered.

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

‘Yes, sir.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were men moving on the hillside opposite.

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

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

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

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

His arrows struck a mantlet and pierced it.

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

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

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

Swan was aiming again.

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

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

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

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

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

‘We’ll come back when you’ve fired the gonne,’ Elder Karl spat. ‘You’ve overcharged it. It might explode.’

‘Fuck you,’ Swan swore. He pulled the tinder box from his belt purse and struck a spark on to some tinder. He checked his aim one more time and touched the glowing char-cloth to the top of the quill.

The little gonne barked like a bolt of sulphurous lightning. The mouth of the barrel rose a foot in the air and slammed down, and the whole frame jumped back a handspan, smacking into Swan’s arm, which might have been broken if he hadn’t been in plate armour.

Across the ravine, on the hillside opposite, a man was screaming. Otherwise, there was no change — the gonne hadn’t hit anything. And yet a half-dozen Turks suddenly burst from the cover of the mantlets and ran back up their ridge.

Peter loosed three arrows in rapid succession and scored two kills. As the last Turk vanished over the crest, he made a wry face. ‘Niet zo slecht,’ he said. ‘Not bad.’

Sir John appeared from the other side of the English tower. ‘Who fired?’ he demanded.

Swan pointed.

One of the Turks was still screaming, his horrible cries echoing around the ravine in an unnatural way. ‘We killed three,’ he said.

Sir John looked at Old Karl, who was just poking his head over the parapet. ‘We were not to fire without orders,’ he said.

Old Karl looked smug.

Swan was suddenly tired. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because we were ordered not to fire,’ Sir John said gently. ‘Young man, obedience is one of our order’s virtues.’ He nodded to the Burgundians. ‘No more firing without orders.’

‘Ve told him not to fire,’ Karl said. Just at that moment, Swan hated all of them.

Sir John was in full plate, and he didn’t shrug. He stood straighter. ‘It would take the wisdom of Solomon to decide whether it is better to disobey and kill three Turks, or to obey the original order and fail to kill the Turks.’ Sir John’s smile wasn’t genial. He leaned over to Karl, who shrank back. ‘It is Master Swan’s business whether he obeys me. It is your business to obey him. Understand?’

The thin English knight went back towards the tower, his steel sabatons rasping on the stone.

‘Obedience is one of our order’s virtues,’ Peter quoted. ‘Along with chastity and poverty. Master Swan, you have brought us to hell.’

Swan, angry as he was, had other thoughts crowding in. He raised a hand for silence.

There it was again — the sound of steel on stone. Like Sir John’s sabatons. Somewhere under his feet.

‘Peter, did you see what they were doing on the hillside?’ Swan asked.

‘Heh!’ Peter said. ‘Dying?’ He laughed his nasty laugh. ‘Is that the sound their black souls make shrieking to hell?’

‘Before you potted them, Peter.’ Swan was looking out under the shade of his hand again. An arrow was lofted from the beach. Swan ducked back and then popped out from behind another merlon. ‘Hello — look, Peter, I got one!’ he said. From his new angle he could see that there was a Turk lying face down behind the nearest mantlet.

It wasn’t the mantlet at which Swan had fired, but that wasn’t important.

‘Doesn’t it look as if there’s an opening?’ Swan asked.

Peter was sulking. ‘Gekke machine,’ he said. ‘Smells like hell come to earth.’ But after both of them had ducked under a new salvo of arrows, he leaned out and glanced. ‘Too dark,’ he said.

Holes in the ground didn’t interest Peter. But Turkish arrows did, and he began to collect a few. He held them up in the last light. ‘Cane. Beautiful. Why don’t our fletchers make them like this?’ he asked. He picked up his own Turkish bow and fitted one. And watched the rocks by the beach. ‘Show yourself,’ he ordered his master.

Swan leaned out and Peter smiled and loosed.

A second later, a man stood, raised his bow, and Peter’s arrow took him in the chest.

Peter was insufferable for the next hour.

After they were relieved, Swan didn’t unarm. Instead, he picked up a pair of lanterns and a long Arabic headscarf. He stopped by the well in the English tower to drink water.

Peter still had his brigandine on. ‘Vere do you tink you are going?’ he said.

Swan frowned. ‘I want to investigate a theory,’ he admitted.

Peter sighed theatrically.

Fifteen minutes later, they were easing past the stinking privies in near-total darkness. Each of them had lanterns, and both were armed.

‘You are insane. You know that,’ Peter said. ‘Christ Jesus, this smell will never come off my good jack. You deserve to be hanged. Sweet Christ!’

Past the privies, moving very carefully. Past the cat piss. Swan’s boots were silent, but his arm harnesses made distinct sounds each time they tapped against stone.

Into the ancient underground street. ‘Which way do you think we’re going?’ Swan asked Peter.

‘I haf no idea, you madman!’ Peter complained. ‘Ve are in hell.’

Indeed, the hidden under-city of Rhodos was a fair simulacrum of hell. It stank — and it was very hot. And absolutely dark. The lanterns with their olive-oil lamps burned with too little light to illuminate any more than a step or two in front of them.

Swan crept down the ancient street. He could feel the slightest breeze on his face, as he had the last time he’d been here — with Salim.

Far away in the darkness, there was a distinct clank.

He eased the sword in his scabbard. And pressed forward.

After ten slow steps, he reached a cross-tunnel. He ran a gauntleted hand over the stone — held his oil lamp in the tunnel and saw the flame move.

‘This way,’ he said.

He struck his head — a ringing blow that staggered him and might have knocked him unconscious if he hadn’t had a helmet on. When he recovered, he raised his lamp and saw that his cross-street — it had cobbled paving under his booted feet — was only four feet high.

‘Must we do this?’ Peter asked. His voice was very loud.

‘I think the escaped slaves are trying to let the Turks into the town,’ Swan said.

‘Vere the fuck are we?’ Peter asked.

Swan rested a moment, his hips against what he suspected were the under-shorings of the English wall. ‘This is the ancient city,’ he said. ‘Many of the old floors — and old walls — still bear weight. So there are empty spaces — and a path among them. Salim knew it. I didn’t think about it at the time — about who exactly lived down here — but it must be escaped slaves.’

‘And they would help the Turks. Of course they would,’ Peter admitted. ‘So — there is a way out?’

‘Can’t you feel the breeze? They must have opened one — or found an old one. There was a great siege here in antiquity.’ Swan levered himself to his feet, avoided striking his head, and crouched, feeling a variety of pains in his back.

Behind him, Peter asked, ‘Just what do you expect to find? Turks?’

Swan hadn’t really given it any thought. Now that he did think about it …

‘Why not just tell Sir John?’ Peter asked.

‘He thinks me a fool,’ Swan spat.

‘No, he thinks you are young,’ Peter said fondly. ‘Vich you are, of course. But I keep you alive and make you much more smart, eh?’

Swan tried to ignore the Dutchman’s banter as crawling on his hands and knees in a tunnel frequented by cats in near-complete darkness was not easy. His breastplate didn’t seem to want to fit in places that his eyes told him he could.

He had to pull the lantern forward, then wriggle past it, then pull it forward again. In the process, something crossed his hands. He flinched.

Peter felt the flinch. ‘Vat vas dat?’ he asked.

Swan’s hands were shaking. ‘A cat,’ he said. ‘Mother of God, I hope it was a cat.’

Swan had never been a great one for prayer, but several more minutes of scrambling along a narrow tunnel in the stinking dark caused him to start a veritable litany of prayer, interspersed with curses.

There was a noise ahead of them. It wasn’t a single clank, but a series of noises — a rattle, a long grinding, a muffled thump.

‘Shit,’ Peter said. ‘Now I’m tinking you are in the right of it.’

Swan heard him sigh.

‘Ve should perhaps go back and fetch help, yes?’ Peter asked.

‘I want to be sure,’ Swan said.

‘I’m plenty sure,’ Peter put in. ‘Lamps out!’ he hissed.

Swan obeyed.

He had thought it was dark before. Now it was utterly dark, the kind of dark he remembered from the cisterns under Constantinople. But they had been clean and airy, and this was hot, close, and reeked of cat and worse.

Swan pushed forward. It was his usual reaction to fear and terror — to go at it — and now he scraped along in the stifling dark until his questing right hand found … nothing.

He reached down, and his breastplate scraped against the floor — or the street, hard to tell. But his right fingers found stone.

To his front, suddenly there was light.

And voices, speaking in Turkish.

‘No! We will take you right into the city!’ complained one.

‘Silence, dog! The knights can hear you. We don’t want to come into the city. We will use your tunnels to place a charge of the powder that burns.’

‘Stapha, you are an old woman. Let’s press forward and seize the wall! We’ll be famous! The Pasha will make us all lords!’

‘Stupid Ghazi! The Pasha is a fool and will not reward anyone.’

‘Shh! In the name of Allah, the merciful and the compassionate, will all of you be silent!’

The last voice had authority.

Swan turned his head. ‘Go and get help!’ he hissed.

Peter grunted.

After a moment, Swan reached out to touch the other man — and there was nothing there.

Tom Swan was alone in the stinking darkness with twenty Turks.

Very slowly, while the Turks debated their next move, Swan swung his booted feet over the low sill he’d discovered and tested the lower floor. Cautious experimentation revealed that he was dropping down into a room — a larger room, judging from the echoes. Or perhaps just a broader corridor. Swan contemplated going back — back along the cat-infested crawlspace behind him. But he couldn’t face fighting in such a constricted place. He was too afraid of coming to a place that his breastplate wouldn’t fit going backwards.

Having got his feet down to the new level, Swan reached out to right and left. The walls were there — just beyond easy reach in both directions.

His heart was beating like an armourer planishing metal — tinktinktinktink. It was so loud he was afraid it was making noise, and so close under his throat that he felt he might throw up. His breastplate suddenly felt too small.

He drew his sword. He did it very carefully — left hand reversed, a long, slow pull.

‘Son of a whore, we can take the town now!’ one man shouted, in Turkish. His voice rang off the walls.

Swan estimated that they were about sixty feet away. He could see two tongues of flame — oil lamps, or lanterns — and a little bit of red which was someone’s cloak, or hood.

He took a cautious step forward and almost fell — there was something lying across the corridor. He felt it with his sword-tip, slid a foot across it, slid the other foot across it. He was sweating so much that he was afraid he would drown in his armour.

Very, very carefully he felt his way another step along the corridor.

And another. Whatever the blockage behind him, he now had space in which to fight.

He checked his dagger.

‘And I say now!’ shouted the most aggressive Turk.

And the torches began to move.

Swan’s hands were shaking so badly he had trouble finding the top edge of his visor. He reached up with his sword-point and touched the ceiling overhead. There was a hissing fall of gravel over his armour, but the ceiling was at least four feet above him.

He brought his visor down. In the stinking darkness, the visor did nothing to limit his vision.

And the torches, or lanterns, crept closer.

‘Pig! Dog! Heretical scum of the underworld!’ a man swore.

It sounded to Swan as if the man had just stubbed a booted toe on something. Swan had a moment’s fellow-feeling for a man he was about to fight.

He brought his sword into a low guard position and waited, knees weak, hands shaking, and breath short. It was very different from being on the deck of a ship in the sunlight, surrounded by friends.

Now he could see the lead man — who walked slightly bent because he was huge, both tall and fat, with dyed red hair and a dyed beard and a short axe in his hand. Swan assumed the man was the aggressive one. He had the look. The torchlight made the man’s red kaftan glow. It almost hurt Swan’s eyes.

Of course, they were all watching the floor.

Swan watched the axe. The sheer size of the first man intimidated him. Intimidation made him angry — always had. Bigger men had bullied him his whole young life.

The torchlight illuminated the floor of the tunnel for five yards. They still hadn’t seen Swan, and he couldn’t stand the tension any more.

He leaped forward and cut, a rising snap from a low guard that sheared through the big Turk’s cheek and nose, so that the tip cut through his left eye and stopped on the ocular ridge. Swan leaned into the weapon and pushed it home into the skull and the man died instantly. The sound of his own wild scream echoed and roared and he wasn’t fully aware that it was his own as he recovered, again low, this time into Fiore’s dente di cinghiare. He was afraid of catching his sword on the walls or the ceiling — but his first strike had made him calm, and having recovered, he struck again, gliding, feet flat, slightly offline to the right and thrusting over the corpse even as the dead man’s torch went out on the cobbles.

The second Turk made a parry — but some of the blow caught him. Swan stepped in and caught his sword with his left hand, halfway down the blade, and thrust it — almost blind in the dark. He thrust three times, sure he’d hit, and then flicked a cut from his wrist as he backed a step. Now the only torch was held by the last Turk, or perhaps an escaped slave, and there were two corpses and Swan could see — a little. He doubted that they saw much of him.

‘Back! Back! The knights know we are here! Back, you fools!’ shouted the one with the voice of iron.

But it was chaos in the corridor.

An older, more experienced man would have leaped at them in that moment, but Swan was still amazed at his initial success and still cautious.

The third man had time to ready his weapons — a light axe, and a curving sword.

‘It is just one man!’ he shouted. ‘Aiiee!’ and he attacked.

Swan ignored the sabre and cut at the axe. The sabre blow rang on his helmet, and his pommel struck something — he had one of the man’s arms, and he broke it at the elbow, and punched his armoured right hand into what he assumed was the face as yet another weapon struck him — he dropped his opponent and stepped back, looking for balance. Two weapons struck him together — a blow to his visor that almost brought him down and a cut to his left arm that rang like a bell on his left vambrace. He had his sword up, and he cut down, into the darkness, and connected — and there was a vicious pain in his right calf. He screamed — or roared.

Someone had his left arm. He slammed his right fist and his pommel at this new threat — connected, and the man fell away — then he took a kick or a punch to his knee that caused him to fall backwards.

His head struck the stones that had almost tripped him as he entered the corridor. He hit hard — but his armet took the blow and his thickly padded liner saved him.

He could hear them coming, and he knew he was hurt, and more on impulse than by training he hauled himself over the rock — under his desperate hands, it became a stone column with deep fluting. He knelt because his left leg was having trouble supporting him, took his sword in both hands, and put the point up.

Forty feet down the tunnel, there was a scream and the last torch went out.

‘One, two, three! Charge!’ called a voice in Turkish. They had taken twenty of Swan’s gasping breaths to ready themselves.

Swan had used the time to get against the right-hand wall, crouched down behind the fallen pillar. He couldn’t see them. But he could certainly hear them.

They all screamed together — the long, undulating scream that had taken Constantinople.

The two leaders hit the pillar together. And fell.

Swan cut — in panic — at the sounds. Hit something soft, cut again, and again. And again. Cut — thrust, cut.

A desperate Turk, heroically brave, seized his sword-blade — probably in his death throes, but his sacrifice was not in vain. By luck, or fortuna, he plucked the blade right out of Swan’s hands. Swan felt it go — heard it fall.

A man hit his chest. And tried to wrap his arms about Swan’s shoulders.

Swan pulled the man over the column — every Turk had to discover the downed column for himself, and it had become Swan’s greatest advantage. He used it to break the man’s balance and threw him, and then fell atop him, steel-clad arms and hands working brutally.

A heavy weapon rang off his helmet. And there was suddenly weight on his back — he rolled, a man screamed, and Swan got his right hand on his rondel dagger. It was still there. He got it out — reversed — and stabbed with it.

He realized that the roaring sound was his own voice.

He felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into the man’s skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back — now kneeling on both knees. He could see nothing. He could hear at least two men dying. Everything smelled of blood, and faeces, and despair.

Perhaps he whimpered. He certainly wanted to.

That was how Fra Tommaso found him, when he came at the head of a dozen knights. Swan was still kneeling, facing the corridor. His armour was caked in blood and dirt, and he had a dagger blade in both hands, and he was weeping. He couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t get his helmet open. As soon as he heard the Italian voices coming, he’d burst into tears.

He was ashamed of his weakness. But that only made him sob. He choked.

Fra Tommaso clutched him to his chest — steel to steel. Torches illuminated the charnel house — seven dead men, all looking as if they’d been savaged by demons or wolves.

‘Ave Maria!’ muttered Sir John Kendal.

Swan couldn’t speak. The man with the crushed skull had been Salim. He had time to see that before he vomited.

‘He’s bleeding,’ said Fra Tommaso.

It took them an hour to get him above ground, and in the end, he lost consciousness.

Swan dreamed about it and awoke, screaming. And Fra Tommaso comforted him.

Either this happened many times, or it was all part of the same nightmare. The dark. The choking heat, the faceplate, the smell of blood, the pressure of a man on his breastplate and the feel of the face caving in under his knife. Again, and again.

And again.

And again.

When Swan recovered himself, he had a moment of extreme disorientation as the man at the end of his narrow bed was Fra Domenico Angelo, known the length and breadth of the Inner Sea as Fra Diablo. The conqueror’s ring burned on his finger like the fire of God.

Swan tried to remember where he was. It probably said something about him that he knew the ring — and felt lust for it — before he came to the conclusion that he was in the Hospital of Rhodos.

He could taste the opium in his mouth. His left leg was wrapped like an Egyptian mummy’s.

The slightest flick of thought and he was in the dark with the weight of a man on his chest and-

‘The conquering hero,’ Fra Domenico said.

Down the ward, a man screamed.

Swan’s body spasmed. And he leaned over the bed and vomited into a basin.

Fra Domenico sat on his bed and kept his long hair out of his chamber pot. ‘Ahh,’ he said, in his disturbingly gentle voice. ‘It was bad, under the earth, wasn’t it, boy?’

Swan felt a disobedient temptation to punch the brother knight.

‘Listen, lad,’ the other man said. ‘That’s what it is like. And will be like, in your dreams, for many nights.’

Swan flashed on … darkness. Hot darkness. A skull bursting under his weight like a hot chestnut on the frozen Thames. He got hold of himself. ‘Sir …’ he panted. ‘What do I do?’

‘Pray,’ Fra Dominco suggested. He knelt, and began to pray — simple words; the Lord’s Prayer and the Ave Maria.

Two days passed. The bandages came off, and Fra Tommaso and Fra John came to take him to the English Langue. Peter came with clothes. Swan was so far from himself that he didn’t feel dirty and didn’t feel any need to shave. He simply put on the clothes.

Swan walked between them like a prisoner. He didn’t look around himself, and he didn’t have much of a sense of where he was. Sometimes he had trouble breathing.

Fra John Kendal brought him along the main street to the English tower, and together they climbed the internal stairs to the second floor, where the knight had his command post.

He sat. Swan sat opposite him with Fra Tommaso. Even Peter sat.

‘Talk,’ John Kendal said. ‘Tell it.’

Swan looked at the darkness for a long time. ‘Can’t,’ he said.

Peter leaned forward. ‘Sooner you tell it. Sooner it stops eating you.’

A cup of wine was put in front of him. He drank it without tasting it, and another, while the others talked.

Suddenly — without even intending to speak — he said, ‘It was hot and it stank and I liked Salim.’ He sobbed the last.

Peter sloshed wine into the cup. ‘Tell us.’

Swan swallowed wine. ‘I fought them. You know,’ he said. He made a motion.

The other two knights sat, silently. Tommaso leaned forward and put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘We all know,’ he said. ‘Now you know, too.’

‘Who was Salim?’ Kendal asked.

Swan took a deep breath and steadied himself. ‘An African slave — a prisoner of war. He showed me the tunnels. Weeks ago. And he — I think he was the one — betrayed them to the Turks.’

Fra Tommaso splashed some of the wine into his own cup. ‘Hardly a betrayal,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘Hmm?’

‘He was the last man I killed,’ Swan said. And then it began to come tumbling out of him — phrase by phrase, like pus leaving a wound. The waiting. The fight.

And then the long nightmare in the dark, listening to them die.

Tommaso drank more. ‘Some of them got away,’ he said. ‘We saw them come out of the opening. Peter showed us. They had torches, and there was a sally. They threw a feint against the walls.’

Swan’s brain was beginning to function. ‘That makes sense,’ he said. ‘When some of them charged me — some ran.’

He drank more wine. ‘They couldn’t see me in the dark,’ he said. Almost as if he felt for them.

Peter frowned. ‘Polished armour is almost invisible in the dark,’ he said.

‘None of them had any armour,’ Swan added.

‘Several of them didn’t have weapons,’ Fra John Kendal said. ‘Young man, no one denies your courage. Then or now. Tell the story.’

After several false starts, Swan did his best. He was drunk by the end, and Peter carried him to his bed.

‘In a year, it will be a tale to amuse the ladies, eh?’ Peter said.

‘Never,’ Swan spat. ‘Sweet Jesus saviour of the world, let me sleep without dreams.’

While he fought with dead men, the Turks buried their dead and sailed away empty handed. The next day, with the worst hangover of his adult life, Swan stood in the pounding sunshine and looked at the empty beach with the refuse of war-barrel staves and human excrement and an old sail flapping noisily. He felt dirty. He bathed, and shaved, and laced all the laces on his clothing. It felt like improvement. And then, obedient to orders, he sailed with both Fra Domenico and Fra Tommaso for Chios.

He managed to walk on board the galley, and he made himself take a turn rowing. When he was done, he drank down a gallon of delicious fresh water tinged with lemon, and threw up over the side. His left leg was weak. But his head was beginning to clear — both from the hangover and from the fight underground. He stumbled along the deck, drank more water, made sure he was clean, and presented himself to the two knights in the stern cabin.

‘You look better,’ Fra Tommaso said.

‘What are we doing?’ Swan asked. ‘Sir?’ he added, as respectfully as he could manage.

‘We’re bound for Chios,’ Fra Domenico said.

Swan swallowed his reply and tried to look eager.

Fra Tommaso pointed out of the stern windows.

There in the sun lay six more galleys — five of them the order’s entire fleet, and the sixth bearing the banner of Genoa.

‘The Turks have gone to attack Kos,’ Tommaso said. ‘We have information that their real target is Chios, and their attacks on us were to keep us pinned at home while they looted the most valuable Christian possessions left in this sea.’

‘I have been appointed the order’s admiral,’ Fra Domenico said. ‘There should be a Genoese squadron at Chios and perhaps a few ships at Mytilini. I intend to gather them, and force the Turks to fight at sea.’

‘And God help us all,’ Fra Tommaso said.

The sea was clean, and it was sunny, and very different from the stinking heat under the earth, and Swan felt better every day — better when he practised with a spear, and his left leg held under him, and better when he drank three cups of wine and ate a little opium to get himself straight to sleep. He created little ways to protect himself. He didn’t go below decks. He avoided being alone in the dark.

They were two days going to Chios. They ran into an empty harbour, and left an hour later, sadder and wiser about the Genoese empire.

Swan was accepted aboard as an officer, and was invited to the command meeting held in the stern cabin. A dozen knights sat along the low benches under the great silver oil lamp, which Swan suspected had been looted from a Greek church, and watched Chios fall away astern.

‘You’d think they’d have kept their fleet in these waters,’ Fra Tommaso said quietly.

Fra Domenico shook his head. ‘Incredible. The fleet sailed home? Because the danger was too high? What danger are we speaking of, here?’

Fra Antonio — a Genoese knight — puffed air out of his lips and poured himself a cup of wine. ‘The Venetians, of course — with all respect to my brothers,’ he said, inclining his head to Fra Silvestre and Fra Giovanni, two Venetian knights across the table.

Fra Sylvestre sighed. ‘Brother, I wish I could protest that Venice would never attack Genoa while she was fighting the Turk.’ He shrugged. And reached for the wine. ‘But we both know that she would.’

Fra Domenico snorted in contempt. ‘This is surely more important than the petty contests of trade!’

‘This from the greatest pirate on the seas?’ spat Fra Sylvestre. He glared at Fra Domenico.

Fra Tommaso — the oldest man aboard — rose carefully to his feet to avoid smacking his head on the deck beams. ‘Brothers — this is not the place to fight among ourselves. Domenico, is it still your intention to sail for Mytilini?’

‘We can be there by nightfall,’ Domenico said. ‘Listen, brothers — piracy has given me some insights into war at sea from which perhaps the order might benefit.’ Fra Sylvestre appeared ready to remonstrate, but Fra Tommaso pressed him down with his right hand.

‘The best way to relieve Chios is to attack Turkish shipping along the coast,’ Fra Domenico said.

‘Really, you are no better than the Turks!’ Sylvestre spat.

‘Perhaps you think we might take them on, ship to ship? Perhaps we could challenge them to single combat?’ Domenico was derisive. ‘We have enough ships to wreck their commerce for two hundred leagues. And nothing will make the Sultan angrier.’

Swan looked at his hands.

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘Make the Sultan angrier? That will certainly help.’

Mytilini had one of the largest fortresses Swan had seen in the whole of the Mediterranean Sea. The fortress stood on the city’s ancient acropolis, a headland towering above the lower town and the Genoese quarter on the hillside, and it had guns which could dominate the anchorages and beaches on either side.

To Swan, it looked more defensible than any place he’d ever seen, except perhaps Monemvasia.

The sun was setting red in the west when they glided inside the fortified breakwater and the rowers folded their heavy oars away, raising them out of the oar ports and feeding them along the central catwalks or into the racks along the ship’s sides. Mytilini cheered them as they landed — seven Christian galleys — and the cheers from the garrison high above met the cheers of the Greek populace lining the beach. On Lesvos, the Genoese — at least, in the guise of the Gattelusi, the ruling family — were well beloved. The Gattelusi had married into the imperial family of Byzantium more than once, and they shared the good looks of the Paleologi and some of their indolence. But their marriages, their powerful private army and their occasional rescues of the Byzantine emperors — some financial, and some military — had earned them the love of their Greek subjects — who also paid the lightest taxes in the eastern Mediterranean.

Swan leaped over the stern to the beach and Peter tossed him the leather bag that held his own clothes and then the leather portmanteau that held Swan’s kit — and then leaped down himself. They walked up the beach, teetering slightly after days at sea. A pair of Greek men came and took their bags with wide smiles.

‘It is nice to be so popular,’ Swan said, smiling at a very pretty Greek girl. She smiled — then blushed and dropped her eyes. And clutched an older woman standing near by, who gave a sniff.

Fra Tommaso landed on the sand with a thump. The oarsmen were all off — most of them already pushing through the crowd. They weren’t going to the brothels and tavernas that lined the waterfront. In this port, they went first up the hill, towards the fortress, in a long and disorderly line.

Swan saw that his kit had joined the line. Fra Tommaso waited until Fra Domenico joined him on the sand, and the two knights went up the hill. The older knight paused and waved. ‘Coming, young scapegrace?’

Swan followed the knights. The line took for ever to move — it started at the edge of the beach, and wound between the lower gates of the fortress and then up to a point that vanished in the dusk on the side of the hill.

The tavernas along the waterfront served wine to the oarsmen in the line — heavy ceramic beakers full of strong red wine that was delicious after salt air. Swan was on his second cup as he passed through the gate.

The soldier there wore a fine, velvet-covered brigandine and had a heavy war bow in his hand. He smiled constantly, but his eyes moved everywhere.

‘You’re English, I think,’ Swan said.

The man smiled. ‘My da was English,’ he said. ‘I’m Greek.’

‘Seems a long way from London,’ Swan said.

The archer shrugged. ‘My pater was from Cumbria. He came out here after Agincourt.’ His eyes went over Swan’s shoulder, and then flicked back.

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘The Gattelusi hire a great many English,’ he said. ‘They always have.’

‘Englishmen make fine pirates,’ Fra Domenico said. He stooped to scratch a stray cat. Mytilini was full of them.

The line moved on — past the guardpost, and up into the rocks. Swan breathed deeply, just to enjoy the smell. And examined the stonework of the redoubt above him. In the last light of the sun, he could see round stones the size of wagon wheels set into the fabric of the fortification. He tried to imagine why anyone would shape round stones to fit into a fort wall.

He thought — all too often — of the fight in the dark. Of the torches of the Turks revealing the fallen column that half-blocked the passageway.

Three slow steps forward later, and despite his heartbeat soaring and his breath coming hard, he had it, and he said ‘??????!’

The two knights and his servant all turned on him as if he were a madman.

‘They’re columns! Ancient columns from temples!’ he shouted excitedly. He was all but bouncing on his toes. ‘Those round stones are column drums — ancient ones!’

‘You speak Greek?’ asked a man at his elbow. The man was still smiling, despite half an hour on the hill carrying Swan’s portmanteau.

‘A little, brother,’ Swan said. ‘Those are columns, yes?’

‘From the pagan times,’ agreed the Greek. ‘Over by Kalloni, there are temples.’

‘Like the Parthenon?’ Swan asked.

The Greek shrugged.

Swan waved at a middle-aged woman with a tray full of wine cups. ‘??????????????????????????????! This man has a thirst for wine.’

The Greek nodded. ‘Very kind,’ he said in a voice that suggested — politely — that men did not carry heavy leather trunks purely from public spiritedness.

Swan paid the woman and tried a flirtatious smile. She responded with a look that suggested that a life of serving wine to fishermen and pirates had given her some fairly effective armour.

Swan put his smile away for easier prey. And inched up the hillside.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

The timoneer, who was next in line behind Swan, grinned. ‘Ancient tradition here. When a galley comes in, we go to the shrine and take mass.’

‘How ancient?’ Swan asked.

He went up three steps. The steps were very old — smooth as glass.

The line moved again. Now he could see there was a heavy wood and iron door — right in the hillside. A party of men came out of it and squeezed down the steps, all smiles — and headed towards the beach and the tavernas.

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘They think that taking mass protects them against the sins they have yet to commit,’ he said. But he watched his oarsmen with the fondness of a parent for his children. ‘Speaking of sin, Master Swan — we are invited to the palace. Tonight, we are to be received, and tomorrow, there is some sort of fete in our honour.’

‘We will stay?’ Swan asked, hope springing eternal. The word ‘palace’ alone offered more hope than anything he’d heard since Alexandria.

‘I want the hulls to dry,’ Fra Domenico said. He was looking at Asia across the strait — only a few leagues wide. ‘Faster ships take more prizes.’

Fra Tommaso took Swan’s hand. ‘Listen. We are men of God — you are a volunteer. So we will send you to this festivity tomorrow. As our representative. Yes? And you will not do the order any dishonour. Hmm?’

Swan sighed.

They climbed a few more steps and the deck officers squeezed by them, pausing to embrace the old knight, who blessed each of them. And then the door opened, and Swan could smell incense.

‘Come on,’ Fra Tommaso said, starting down steep steps into the dark interior.

Swan got one step down before he froze.

He felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into his skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back — now kneeling on both knees.

He was kneeling on cold stone. Someone was trying to pull him, and he got his arm around the man’s neck and jerked him off balance …

‘It’s me! Christ on the cross, are ye wode!’ shouted Peter in his ear.

Fra Domenico caught Peter and pushed him away. ‘He’s fighting under the city! On Rhodos! Let him be!’ Hands seized Swan around the waist and turned him — so that he could see stars, and the shocked faces of the timoneer and the man carrying his trunk.

He took a shuddering breath.

Fra Domenico turned his head. ‘Smell the incense, my son. See the candles and feel God’s holy presence. There is nothing here for you to fear. This is a holy place.’ His voice was very gentle — very calm. And it ran on, and on.

Swan found that he was … himself. Except that his hands were shaking so hard that he could not hold the railing for the stairs.

‘Take him back into the air,’ Tommaso said.

Swan closed his eyes and swallowed bile. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘I’ll go down.’

He made a foot reach down, and then another, and then another. It seemed like a hundred steps down into the earth, and he could feel the weight of the tons of rock over his head, a palpable force pressing down on him. He was sweating as if he were fighting in armour.

But he made it to the sandy floor of the cave. And the cave wasn’t dark at all. It was lit by a hundred candles, and the smell of incense drowned the smell of blood that stuck in his nose the way dog shit can stick to your throat.

The priest was Greek. But for once, that didn’t seem to matter. He smiled, said a few words, and gave the two knights communion. They knelt to take it and muttered Latin invocations.

Despite his spinning head — as much to control it as anything — Swan took the bread and murmured, ‘???????????????????????????????????????.’

The priest raised a clerical eyebrow. And gave the host to Peter.

A hundred heartbeats later, he was out under the stars with the two knights. He took in great gasps if air as if he’d been unable to breathe.

‘You’ll want to bathe before we go to the palace,’ Fra Domenico said, more kindly than Swan had ever seen him. The man’s ring glittered with an inner light as he gestured. ‘There’s a bath just there, where the street rises in front of the gates. Hurry.’

Swan was beginning to get his bearings. ‘How ancient was that … chapel?’

Tommaso shrugged. ‘From pagan times, no doubt — but no less holy for that.’

Fra Domenico shook his head. ‘No — our young hero is smitten by the ancient world. Aren’t you, lad? Nymphs and satyrs and priestesses.’

‘I should like to see the temples at Kalloni.’ For the first time in two weeks, he thought of Cardinal Bessarion. ‘And my master, Cardinal Bessarion, had a mission for me — at Kalloni.’

‘Go and bathe,’ Fra Tommaso said, a little impatiently. ‘We’ll clean our throats with some good red wine. I want to render unto Caesar, and visit my friends here.’

The baths were packed with sailors and oarsmen, but Swan’s status as a Donat and his fame from the fight under the walls won him a spot in the bath almost immediately. Men moved aside — men bowed.

There is something very odd about accepting praise, or even courtesy, while naked. Swan felt shy — he certainly didn’t enjoy the attention as he might have on another occasion.

He didn’t pay enough heed to the men ahead of him, and hopped down into the first bath.

And shrieked.

All around him, oarsmen and sailors cursed — and laughed.

‘First time, my lord?’ asked an oarsman with the body of Herakles. The man had more muscles on his abdomen than Swan would have thought possible. The water was so hot that Swan was afraid that his testicles might burn off.

‘Yes,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Lower yourself,’ said another man. ‘Slowly. Don’t fight it. Relaxes the muscles.’

They all looked like Herakles. And they were all grinning.

‘Cup of wine or two, hot bath, a girl on your lap, and the world is a fine place,’ agreed the deep-voiced figure of Poseidon just by him.

It was dark, and hot — but the water was so hot that it steadied him, and he didn’t have to be afraid. And he was … touched by the respect of the oarsmen. When he got out, another man led him to the cold water, and he swam a little.

A small boy offered him a cup of wine from a tray.

The sailor put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not unless you want to buy the boy, too, mate,’ he said. And grinned. ‘Custom of the house.’

Swan smiled at the boy and shook his head — and made his way to the dry room where he had shed his clothes. He felt so very clean that the clothes he’d been wearing now seemed filthy. He opened his portmanteau and dressed in his second best — brown cloth — too warm for spring in Greece but clean and neat. He paid an old woman a few bronze sequins to do his hair and he sat on the porch of the bath with a cup of wine while the two knights talked to the Greek priest from the cave in the outdoor wine shop under the eaves.

‘A person might think you were a pretty girl and not a knight of Christ at all,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Although, I confess that, having met your wife, her standards might have — hmm — rubbed off?’ He laughed.

‘His wife?’ Fra Domenico asked.

‘A very beautiful woman,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Fra Domenico smiled — a private smile, as if something he’d understood had been confirmed. ‘Have you any children, my son?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps we will, with God’s help,’ Swan said, and just for a moment, he saw her naked in his mind’s eye.

‘Children are the greatest blessing of marriage,’ Fra Domenico said.

I’m receiving marriage counselling from the most notorious pirate in the Inner Sea, thought Swan. He paid a small tip to the old Greek woman, who smiled toothlessly and patted him.

‘Adonis is prepared to grace us with his company,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Peter nodded from the porch of the baths. ‘I’ll just be making my way down to the waterfront,’ he said. ‘If you happen to kill anyone, be sure and take their purses — eh, my lord?’

Swan took this as a cue and delved into his own purse for a handful of ducats.

‘Any left for your own girl?’ Peter asked quietly.

Swan shrugged. He felt clean. He was almost out of money and, as usual, ready to face the world one desperate crisis at a time.

The palace of the Gattelusi appeared small enough from the outside. Located securely on the highest point of the acropolis inside the fortress, it was itself a citadel, with its own walls and its own chapel. The interior of the great fortress was not flat — rather, it rose constantly from the three successive gates, past the church, to the citadel. In the gatehouse and again on the walls of the citadel, the arms of the Gattelusi were carved into the stone — over and over — alongside the great double-headed eagle of the Paleologi. To the left and right, on one of the great towers of the citadel, there were — Swan stopped walking and fell behind Fra Tommaso — warriors. And men fighting animals.

Fra Domenico turned. ‘Master Swan!’ he called out.

Swan heard him, in a distant way. He was transfixed.

Fra Domenico walked back down the hill. And looked up. The last rays of the spring sun put a ruddy light over the high tower and placed the figures in high relief.

‘Gladiators, Fra Domenico!’ Swan said in wonder. ‘Roman gladiators on Lesvos.’

The knight put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘Come on, my young classicist. Let us meet the owners. Perhaps they’ll give you one.’ He smiled at the older knight. ‘We are leading this young man into temptation!’ He waved at the palace. ‘In there is one of the finest collections of antiquities you will ever see.’

The last rays of the sun made the diamond on his finger glow like something magical.

The palace of the Gattelusi was as opulent as any palace in Rome — decorated in the most modern classical style, with the signal difference that many of the statues were not copies, but the real thing. A magnificent figure of a nude woman stood in the entry hall — modestly covering herself, eyes cast down, she arrested the viewer instantly. Behind her was a painted frieze in the classical style — paint on stucco — depicting dancing nymphs and satyrs. On the plinth to the left of the statue stood a single immense urn — a krater in ancient Greek red-figure ware, with a scene of Penelope weaving at her loom in the foreground, Odysseus leaning on his spear. Lest there be any doubt, their names were written in the ancient letters.

Swan looked down and found he was standing on a mosaic floor — a mosaic of a man and a woman, done in stones so small that the woman’s made-up eyes had six or seven tones to them.

Something like a groan escaped Swan.

Fra Domenico laughed. ‘It is the earthly paradise,’ he said.

Fra Tommaso was less inclined to be lyrical. ‘Is there a major-domo?’ he asked the two slaves who’d ushered them in.

‘I like to greet my guests in person,’ came a voice. It was an odd, androgynous voice — the voice of a mature woman, or perhaps an old man, or a very young one. The Italian was without accent — neither Roman nor Milanese nor Venetian nor Genoese. Merely — Italian.

Swan looked around. There were two African slaves by the door, and another pair of matching Bulgarian slaves standing by what appeared to be the main archway into the living quarters.

He looked up.

A storey above him, a magnificent silver lamp seemed to float in the air, the twenty wicks giving a golden light. Each wick emerged from the head of a beast, and all of the beasts were joined to a central body that twisted as if in mortal combat. The whole lamp was silver, and the chain that vanished overhead into the murk of the tower’s interior was silver.

And on the other side of the lamp, there was a small balcony — an interior balcony. On it stood a man dressed in traditional Byzantine robes, with a small purple-red hat adorned with pearls. He had a mature face — Swan thought he was in his fifties — with wide-set, liquid eyes and the long, straight nose of the Byzantine emperors.

Fra Domenico bowed. ‘Prince Dorino,’ he said.

Fra Tommaso shook his head softly, but said nothing.

The prince leaned over his balcony. ‘You admire my lamp, young man?’ His soft, womanly voice was disconcerting. It floated on the air and played tricks and made Swan unsure about who had spoken. It was like some mummer’s trick at a fair by the Thames.

‘I think it is remarkable,’ Swan said. ‘Is it … Roman?’

Prince Dorino laughed softly. ‘Roman? Psst — that for Rome,’ he said, and snapped his fingers. ‘Rome was a nation of barbarians who could do nothing but copy. It is Greek, young man. Everything worth having was made by the Greeks.’ He smiled. ‘Come — the advantage in height is too overwhelming. Come upstairs — my cousin is here and we are all learning our parts for the fete tomorrow.’

The two Slavs bowed and escorted the three men, in their plain clerical brown, past a magnificent tapestry of men hunting a rhinoceros; to a set of stairs broad enough to drive a wagon up to the top, curving like a snail’s shell, in pale marble. The stairs were flanked by fluted columns. Swan reached out and touched one. He looked at the base and saw that it was ancient — looked up at the capital and saw a design he didn’t know at all.

‘It is Aeolian,’ said a woman’s voice, quite near at hand.

Swan realized that he was standing with his mouth half-open, gaping like a fish. He was at the base of the steps. A woman clad in a chiton, with the peplos folded down for modesty, stepped out from behind the pillar. She had skin the colour of newly finished oak, and black hair that fell in ten thousand curls, and the most astonishing green eyes flecked in gold, like emeralds set in rings. She looked so very like an ancient statue sprung to life that Swan lost his ability to speak for a moment. Then he bowed, as deeply as if to a cardinal. When he raised his head, she was gone.

Swan stood like a statue himself for a moment, and then raced up the steps after the sound of the knights.

At the top of the great steps, an arch twenty feet tall opened into a great hall. The hall itself spoke with many voices — there were heads of animals, including a pair of lions; there were weapons, from a magnificent bronze sword whose green patina was glossy with preservation to a new steel arming sword with an elaborate hilt in the latest style — armour hung on the walls, and from the rafters high above, and spears were crossed all the way down one side. But the tapestries all had classical subjects — Swan didn’t think he had ever been in a hall so lacking in Christian decoration.

There were long tables down the centre of the hall, with a mixture of benches and tables. A pair of musicians in typical Italian court clothes played pavanes and German dances that Violetta would have recognised and Swan did not, but the sound of the lutes made him smile. At a table, six women — each prettier than the next — wove garlands of flowers from baskets of cut blossoms. At the end of the hall, Prince Dorino sat in state, with a pair of knights and a tall, elderly man in plain black clothes.

The Bulgarians escorted them the length of the hall and bowed. Swan bowed. The two hospitaller knights merely inclined their heads.

‘Prince Dorino,’ Fra Domenico said in greeting.

‘My dearest pirate,’ returned the prince in his rich and dulcet voice. The prince extended a hand. ‘This is my admiral, Lord Zacharie. And the captain of my little army — the lord of Eressos. Who is your young man?’

‘An English volunteer, Prince. Master Tommaso Suani, of London. The grandson of the great English Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt.’ Fra Domenico smiled.

‘An English prince? As a volunteer? That seems promising, to me. Will your cousins bring us a crusade to rescue us from the Turk?’ Prince Dorino seemed to find the whole idea comic.

Fra Tommaso put a hand on his sword-hilt. ‘Is it nothing to you that a Turkish fleet is at sea?’

‘Ah — my old friend Ser Tommaso. Are you indignant? Listen, my friend. The Turks will come for my paradise soon enough. Why borrow the trouble?’ Dorino laughed. The men around him did not. They remained almost immobile.

The prince looked at Swan. ‘Speak,’ he commanded. ‘Where is your crusade?’

Swan stood straighter. ‘My lord, I am all there is likely to be from England. Englishmen don’t like to go abroad unless they are paid.’

The Lord of Eressos smiled.

‘Your Italian is impeccable, for an Englishman,’ the prince conceded. ‘Are these seven ships all you have?’ he snapped.

Fra Domenico bowed. ‘They are, my lord.’

The man in black clothes smoothed his moustache and glanced at the Lord of Eressos.

Prince Dorino sat back. ‘We have another dozen galleys,’ he said.

‘Where are they?’ demanded Fra Tommaso.

There was a silken rustle near at hand, and Swan turned his head to see the classical Greek maiden, now dressed as a modern Genoese maiden, come in, her silk skirts stiff with embroidery.

She raised her eyes — and her glance caught Swan’s.

In a fight — a real fight — there is a moment in a hard attack, or a heavy parry, where the blades meet edge to edge. And the two sharp edges bite into one another. The two lock — steel cutting steel. Just for a moment.

She moved on down the hall and Swan’s heart raced.

Prince Dorino laughed. ‘Master Suani! You are blushing. Has my cousin moved you more than my lamp?’ He laughed his high-pitched laugh. And turned, his expression changing as quickly as his head moved, to frown at Fra Tommaso. ‘My ships are safe in the Bay of Kalloni — where yours would be safer, as well. You know that I had the whole squadron of Genoa in my harbour? Yes? And the cowards turned their back on the foe and ran. All the way to Genoa, I have little doubt.’

Fra Tommaso pursed his lips. ‘With a dozen ships we might have enough power to take the Turkish vanguard, if we could separate them from their fleet.’

Prince Dorino made a motion of dismissal with his hand. ‘Out of the question. I will not risk my fleet in some desperate measure against the Turks. I am negotiating with them even now. And — incidentally — the Genoese captain who was with you has just slipped his moorings and is headed back to sea. To Genoa, I’m sure.’

Fra Tommaso set his mouth and didn’t utter a curse. Fra Domenico shrugged. ‘No great loss. In a galley fight, one only wants ships that have the stomach to stay until the end.’

Prince Dorino made a moue. ‘Have you suggested to these other gentlemen that the surest way to slow the Turk is to attack his shipping?’ He smiled, his lips thin as sword-edges. ‘Of course you have. You are a pirate for God, yes?’ He laughed.

Fra Tommaso’s face was red. ‘We are accomplishing nothing here,’ he said. ‘We should go.’

Prince Dorino nodded. ‘I will not loan you my fleet to make war on the Turks and bring the fighting to my own shores,’ he said. ‘I will allow you to take on water and food in my ports. The Bay of Kalloni is virtually impregnable, and from there you can cover the whole north coast of Chios.’

‘I need no lessons in strategy from you, my lord,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Prince Dorino sat back again. ‘Do you not? Very well.’

Fra Domenico glared at his partner and bowed — again — to the prince. ‘May we have two days to rest our rowers and dry our hulls, my lord?’

‘How graciously asked,’ Dorino said. ‘Of course. And tomorrow, we have a small festivity to celebrate the end of Lent. We will have a play — an ancient Greek play. And music and dancing.’

‘None of those vanities will appeal to us,’ said Fra Tommaso.

Swan’s heart fell.

‘Perhaps this fine young English prince will come and represent you,’ Prince Dorino said. ‘I fancy him. I suspect he’d make a fine ancient Greek warrior — Achilles, perhaps, or Aeneas.’

Swan smiled and bowed. ‘I would be delighted, my prince,’ he said. ‘But Aeneas, surely, was a Trojan?’

‘So you are literate, young man? Come, then, and leave your nursemaids to their wine and their priests. My young cousin will speak briefly to you on the matter of dress. We all dress as Greeks. It is my will.’ He waved dismissively.

The Lord of Eressos followed them down the hall and bowed deeply to the beautiful ancient Greek maiden. ‘Princess, this is the noble Lord Tommaso Suani of England.’ He bowed and indicated Swan.

Swan bowed — again.

Fra Tommaso laughed, but kept quiet otherwise.

The other women gathered around Swan, as if examining him for flaws. Each of them dropped a curtsy to the knights.

‘I’m sure there’s a chiton to fit him. Something with a stripe in red,’ said one girl.

The princess inclined her head graciously. ‘Ancient Greek clothes are not difficult to make fit, Master Swan,’ she said in an accent as foreign as it was glorious. Swan felt as if someone had put a hand on his heart and given a gentle squeeze. She smiled, and again, just for a moment, her eyes brushed past his. ‘As he is a prince, perhaps he can wear a stripe of purple. Is this allowed by your king?’

Swan thought for a moment, looking for an answer that would show a ready wit and a willingness to fall at her feet. But he had to settle for the truth. ‘No, Your Grace,’ he said.

She put a hand on his arm. ‘Surely, as you are a prince of mighty England and I am a princess of decadent Rome, we may call each other by our names. I am Theodora.’

‘I am Tommaso,’ he said. He could feel where her fingers had touched the back of his hand as if she’d struck him.

The other women giggled.

The knights fidgeted.

‘I shall not be able to sleep, so anxiously will I look forward to tomorrow’s entertainment,’ Swan said.

‘Ah, please sleep,’ Theodora said. ‘You will want to be well rested.’

With that, she smiled to herself and sat, and the other women gathered around her. And the Lord of Eressos walked them down the great staircase, and accompanied them silently to the door, where he bowed.

Outside, in the perfumed air of a Lesbian night, Swan sighed.

Fra Tommaso shook his head. ‘Shall I name you a penance before you commit the sin? You are like an oarsman …’ He sighed. ‘With better taste.’

Fra Domenico shook his head. ‘You are married, young man. And in the service of the order.’

Swan sighed heavily, a young man set upon by older men. He thought of stinging comments like We’re not really married, and I’m not proposing to murder a boatload of Islamic pilgrims. In fact, he thought of such responses all the way down the hill to the great gates, and then all the way to the taverna, where a Greek man was singing and wine was being served.

And Fra Tommaso handed him a cup of wine, and said, ‘Hard as it may be to believe, we were young, once.’

Fra Domenico laughed — head thrown back — the first uncalculated thing Swan had seen the man do. He laughed, and the ring on his finger caught the light from the oil lamps and winked. Fra Tommaso laughed so hard he had to stand up, and in the end, Swan had to laugh himself.

Swan attempted to sleep late. He wanted to sleep late. He’d drunk wine with the two older men until it was quite late, and they’d swapped tales, and Fra Tommaso’s friend the Greek priest had joined them — three old men and one young one.

But he had lost the habit of indolence. His eyes opened with the change in the sound of the wind, and he got up and pissed in a pot and went back to his narrow bed. Fra Tommaso snored a few feet away, and despite his cacophony of barnyard noises, Swan went straight back to sleep, but when the soft pink fingers of rosy-handed dawn crept across the horizon and brushed his eyelids, they snapped open, and he was awake.

No ship. No pitching deck, no orders to give, no tiller under his hand. No masts to examine. Very little wind.

He let his mind wander — to Violetta, to Khatun Bengul, to Tilda and any other woman he could imagine, but what came to him instead were the sound of an assassin’s footsteps in an alley in Venice and the feeling of a skull popping under his weight.

‘Christ,’ he cursed, now fully awake. He sat up and shivered in the pre-dawn cold.

He got up and found his writing kit, and carried it down to the beachfront littered in tables and chairs, and sat in the dawn and wrote a letter to Violetta. It was only the second letter he could remember writing, on his own, and it took him quite some time to compose — he wanted it to sound witty.

He was not altogether pleased with the result, and one paragraph in particular sounded the wrong note. He’d tried to explain about fighting — about how he felt when he fought. It sounded … foolish.

He took his sharp quill knife and cut the parchment. Then he rummaged again in his writing kit, looking for a scrap of parchment to glue on for a better paragraph, and instead found Cyriaco of Ancona’s little book.

He had forgotten about it altogether.

He opened the book to Mytilini, and sure enough, there were four names, with addresses and amounts of money. None of them, he noted, were women, and for a moment he wondered how he could write a letter to Violetta while contemplating finding a nice warm …

He smiled and sighed.

He found the four houses easily enough. The nearest was in the street immediately behind the taverna — the farthest was all the way on the other side of the fortress, just a ten-minute walk. The air was pleasant and the Greeks greeted him as if he, too, lived there, despite his sword and dagger and Italian clothes, and he responded in kind, with the saint’s day and the local benison.

When he came to the most distant house, a man was sitting in a chair by his front doorstep, mending a net.

‘Khairete!’ Swan greeted the man.

The man frowned and went back to his net.

‘You fish?’ Swan asked.

‘No, I use this to catch demons, and to imprison rude fellows who ask impertinent questions.’ The man raised his eyes and smiled. He was fifty or more years old, and he had the eyes and nose of a heavy drinker. He shrugged. ‘Eh, and sometimes I catch fish. You? You kill people, eh?’

Swan shook his head. ‘Only when they annoy me,’ he said, hoping he had the tone of the conversation right. ‘Do you know Cyriaco? The Italian?’

The man on the chair raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps.’ He affected indifference. ‘There are many Italians named Cyriaco,’ he said.

‘De’ Pizzicolli?’ Swan asked. ‘From Ancona?’ He reached into his purse and extracted a good coin — a Venetian soldino which he’d kept because it was new minted, shiny, and the relief was excellent.

The old drunk eyed the coin for a moment. ‘I don’t sell wine,’ he said. ‘And a Venetian coin on a Genoese island is a hard thing to spend. Eh?’ He got up and went inside.

Walking away, Swan realised that he might have played that game better — he might have had a small payment ready in the form of a gift — or even a jug of wine. He might have spoken to the man in a more private place. He might have done many things, but he hadn’t, and he’d only make a fool of himself trying to get the man back.

And he wondered how the Gattelusi would feel about his quest for informants. He began to watch the streets around him the way he would have done if it had been Venice. Or Rome.

After a breakfast of stale bread and wine, he tried again, at the third address. This time, he watched the house for an hour from the steps of the nearest Greek church — watched the owner turn a key in his door, and walk off towards the harbour with a bag on his back. Swan followed him into the main market in the middle of the town, where the man hooked curtains over the bare poles of` a stall, hauled a table from a nearby shed, and began to lay out wares.

Swan wandered over. The man was a silversmith, and Swan examined his wares and chose a set of twenty buttons, equally useful to a rich Greek or a prosperous Italian, with the head of the Virgin on each one.

He took the last six ducats from his purse and counted down two for the buttons. And then two more.

‘Cyriaco of Ancona sends his greetings,’ he said as casually as he could manage.

The man’s hand hovered over the gold coins.

Swan’s gut tightened.

And then the hand pounced like a cat on a rat. ‘I have missed our chats,’ the Greek said. ‘I sent a letter,’ he whispered. ‘I never got a reply.’

Swan nodded. ‘All I want is for you to continue writing letters,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a cup of wine?’ he added, motioning to where a small taverna was just opening, the owner blinking in the new sunlight.

The Greek man’s smile tightened.

Inside his own head, Swan kicked himself. ‘Ah — of course. Perhaps we might meet …’ Swan struggled for some way they might appear together in public — a Greek and a Frank.

‘Cyriaco sometimes liked to visit the old ruins,’ the Greek said. ‘I can hire donkeys and horses — if you have time. Perhaps tomorrow?’

Swan bowed. ‘I would like that of all things,’ he said. ‘Might we visit the temples near Kalloni?’

The Greek sniffed slightly, as if detecting a foul smell. ‘That is … very far. The baths at Thermi? A quick trip.’

Swan sighed. ‘Of course.’

They parted with every evidence of goodwill.

The next few hours taught Swan that spying — the gathering of information — was the very dullest of occupations. Had there been anyone to train him … But there was not, and Swan criss-crossed the town, seeking excuses to talk to people who would never, ordinarily, talk to foreigners. He had the advantage of a list of people who had, at least, been willing to do such a thing in the past — but the list of people didn’t include any methods of making the first contact, and he had to learn every element from first principles.

By mid-afternoon, when the church bells rang for nones, he was tired, hungry and irritable.

And then he realised that he was due in two hours at the castle, and he hurried to his inn.

‘There’s a package on the bed for you,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘And a note from a Greek silversmith, and another from a man who rents horses. What a busy, busy boy you are.’

The package on the bed was a magnificent piece of linen with woven-in stripes of deep Tyrian red-purple, the very colour most prized by the emperors at Constantinople. It had a stripe along each selvedge. The whole was sewn in a tube. There were, included in the package, a pair of pins — really, brooches — that were in the form of lions. They were made of solid gold, and worth … Swan guessed they were worth twenty ducats a piece. There was also a belt of tiny gold links, and a pair of sandals in red leather with gold buckles. And a very short cloak — a wonderful, soft wool, dark blue, but with a Tyrian red hem that matched the rest.

Swan played with the fabric, trying to imagine how to put it on.

Then he went to the baths. This time, he moved more quickly, avoided boys with trays of wine, and was neat, clean, and presentable an hour before he was due at the castle. He walked down the beach, where two work parties — oarsmen and sailors who had earned Fra Tommaso’s wrath — were scraping the hulls and applying clean, new pitch.

The Lord of Eressos was watching. With him were a dozen mounted stradiotes and two heavy wagons. Swan walked carefully across the sand and paused, a little unsure of himself. As a volunteer of the order, did he outrank a local lord? Or rather, would he annoy the knights?

He was saved from his social predicament by the Lord of Eressos bowing from the saddle. ‘Ah! The English prince.’

Swan returned the bow with interest. ‘My lord,’ he said.

‘Happy Saint George’s Day, Your Grace’ the man said. He smiled. ‘For you heretics!’

The Lord of Eressos was not as old as he had appeared the day before. Rare among Greeks, he had blond hair — ruddy blond, with a snub nose and freckles. With time to examine him, Swan noted that he had Genoese gloves tucked in his belt, and wore Italianate hose and boots, very different from what his retainers wore. And a fine sword that looked — to Swan’s professional eye — like a German sword with some age to it.

All this in an instant. Swan nodded. ‘I shall sail back in ten days and wish you the same, my lord.’ He wasn’t sure he’d ever actually been referred to as ‘Your Grace’ before, and he was prepared to like it.

‘My father was a great one for Saint George,’ the lord went on. ‘And Saint Andrew and Saint Patrick. He was not a Greek.’

‘English?’ Swan asked, because he was coming to believe that half the population of Lesvos was English.

‘Scots,’ the Lord of Eressos said. ‘He came out when the Company of Saint George took the condotta for the Gattelusi. He was constable,’ the young man said with pride. ‘By the way, I’m called Hector. Hector Zambale of Eressos.’

Swan tried to parse Zambale and came up with nothing. ‘Is Zambale a local name?’ he asked.

The young tow-headed Greek grinned. ‘In Scots, its Campbell. Zambale is what the Emperor made of Da’s name.’

Swan grinned. The Lord of Eressos’s smile was infectious. ‘Enjoying our ships?’ he asked.

‘The prince ordered us to provide pitch this morning. Prince Dorino likes to see his orders carried out quickly. He wants you to sail away and leave us alone as soon as possible, so that if the Turks return he can claim he didn’t know you.’ Zambale watched two men with a red-hot iron sealing the patched seam on the bow of the Blessed Saint John. ‘We offered shipwrights, but apparently your knights don’t trust Greeks near their ships.’

There didn’t seem to be a good answer to that.

‘Is it true you are a prince of England?’ Zambale asked. ‘I hope I don’t offend when I say you seem a lot more relaxed than the princes I know.’

Swan laughed. ‘I’m the bastard of a bastard. Nonetheless, John of Gaunt really is my grandfather.’

‘A famous line, even if reached the wrong way,’ Zambale said. ‘Prince Dorino intends to make much of you tonight. Can you dance?’

‘I know all the Italian dances,’ Swan said, suddenly thankful for Violetta’s instruction and a month of home entertainment.

Zambale nodded. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It should be quite an evening.’ He looked around. ‘The oarsmen say you are quite the swordsman. That you killed ten Turks fighting in a mine under Rhodos.’ He grinned to take the sting out of his next remark. ‘You don’t look like such a firebrand.’

Swan scratched his beard. ‘Swords fascinate me. I … practise. And the knights — they have very high standards for everything — wrestling, swordsmanship — even fighting with the dagger.’

Zambale’s eyes fairly glowed with enthusiasm. ‘Would you care to teach me?’ he asked.

‘Teach you what?’ Swan asked.

‘Anything!’ Zambale said. ‘I’m a young pup in a backwater and nothing ever comes here. We don’t get good sword masters and we don’t get good dancing masters. I learned everything from Da’s friends.’ He said it with the air of a man who didn’t believe a word of his own modesty.

Sweet Jesu, Swan thought. He thinks he’s a swordsman.

The Lord of Eressos dismounted and threw his reins to an oarsman, who glared at him with the resentment of a free man for an aristocrat.

‘You don’t practise with sharp swords,’ Swan said as kindly as he could manage. ‘In Italy and Rhodos they have practice swords.’

Hector Zambale was young and immortal. ‘Oh — we do. Nothing to it. I’ll be careful.’ The younger man was bouncing on his toes. He was a clear six feet tall and probably three fingers taller than Swan, and had shoulders as broad as an ox. He drew his heavy long sword with a flourish.

Swan wasn’t wearing a long sword. ‘If you’d like me to show you some things, perhaps you’d like to use an arming sword?’ he asked.

The other man nodded. ‘Sure, it would be a great shame to have a mismatch.’ He went to his horse and drew a smaller sword from the scabbard on his saddle.

‘The big sword was my da’s,’ he said. ‘Now we’ll have a proper tiff.’

His arming sword was much more modern — with a finger ring and a complex ricasso, it was like a slightly more aristocratic version of a Venetian marine’s sword, complete to a spur on the backbone for trapping the unwary.

‘Guard yourself, now,’ Zambale said, and attacked.

The Graeco-Scot was big and fast and, unlike a genuine swordsman, seemed to be willing to squander energy with every blow, so that he twirled his weapon, made a dozen fanfaronades, cut the air, and bounced on his toes. Swan moved around the beach as quickly as he could, trying to remain fluid and graceful and hoping desperately that someone would come and put a stop to it.

Instead, the oarsmen gathered in a ring and began wagering.

‘Stop running away!’ Zambale shouted. ‘You were going to teach me.’ He laughed.

Swan cursed and backed away again. The younger man would have been easy to kill — his whole style invited Swan to cut his sword-hand off at the wrist, and the temptation to do so was growing. The redhead was swinging hard — swinging to intimidate. If he missed a parry, he’d be dead.

Swan tried a simple overhead cut, and the other man parried heavily, so that the sword-blades locked for a moment. Zambale pushed — hard — and made Swan stumble.

Swan thrust outside into the bigger man’s covered line — a foolish move, but it did guarantee the man would be safe. As Swan stepped back from his failed attack, Zambale twirled his sword over his wrist …

And Swan cut at his head, forcing him to make a rapid parry. It was the same blow as before — the Graeco-Scot grinned as the blades locked.

He began to use the force of his wrist on the bind, but Swan had a different notion, and had stepped forward and offline. His left hand shot out and he grabbed his opponent’s blade high in the air — near the point — while keeping the blades locked by the hilt. Then he pushed with his left hand, rotating the other man at his knees and midsection. His left elbow passed over Zambale’s head, and the blade — his own blade — lay along his neck.

‘You canna catch a man’s blade in your hand!’ Zambale said.

Swan continued to exert force. He put a foot behind the other man’s and began to force him inexorably to the ground with his knee. ‘Now,’ Swan said pleasantly, in Greek, ‘I can kill you with your sword, or break your arm, or simply put you face down in the sand.’

‘You canna catch a man’s sword in your bare hand in a real fight,’ the local man insisted. But he slumped, and Swan let him go.

‘You can,’ Swan said. ‘I just did. Look. Stand on guard.’ Swan noted that, in fact, the man’s guard was fifty years out of date — he stood with his left leg forward and his sword cocked back over his shoulder.’ He nodded and took up his own guard. One of Maestro Vadi’s.

‘Cut at my head. A nice simple fendente.’ He raised his sword’s tip.

Zambale didn’t like this, as it was not the game he’d imagined — so when he cut, he did it with a clumsy feint and a lot of force.

Swan caught his blade with a high parry and held it well to the inside of his head — and then reached up and caught it with his hand. Very lightly, he tapped the big man on the head with his sword.

‘Well!’ Zambale said. ‘That’s a trick. It must be that new swords are lighter. You couldn’t do that against a heavy sword.’

Swan didn’t feel like relenting. ‘It is easier with a heavy sword.’

Zambale looked at his blade, which had several deep nicks, and frowned. ‘Hmmf,’ he said. ‘School tricks.’

‘I thought that you wanted to see what the Italian schools offered?’ Swan said.

‘I don’t need a lesson from you,’ Zambale said. ‘I know what works in a real fight.’

Swan was old enough to know invincible ignorance when he saw it. ‘Well — a pleasant Saint George’s Day to you.’ He examined his blade and sheathed it.

The stradiotes were paying off their wagers. The oarsmen clapped Swan on the back. There was some evident ill-feeling, and Swan was pretty sure he hadn’t done the cause of Christian unity any good.

And he’d sweated through his doublet.

Swan arrived at the citadel exactly as the hour of eight o’clock rang from the chapel. The knights had told him to be on time, and he had heeded them.

There was no one in the hall but servants laying tables.

The positive side of being the very first guest was that he had time to change into his costume. Servants took him to an old solar, where he changed. He stripped off his Italian clothes and played with the chiton for ten minutes until a bored slave approached him and offered, in a pantomime of gestures, to pin his chiton. When he was pinned and belted, and he’d played with the pleats — it was a surprisingly complex garment for its apparent simplicity — he tied his sandals, and pinned his beautiful cloak over his shoulder, and wished for a mirror.

Instead, he put his Italian clothes in a neat pile and went out into the hall.

There was still no one there. If it hadn’t been for the boards newly laid and the smell of a feast in preparation, he would have worried that he had the wrong day.

He began to wander the hall. There were cabinets — three of them. Each filled with delightful antiquities. There was an entire lacquered tray of ancient coins — some of the finest that Swan had ever seen, including a great many from Samothrace, and more with dolphins and beautifully realised women — Swan found one big silver coin breathtaking.

‘I shall have my collections more carefully watched,’ Prince Dorino said in his odd voice. This time, he was already at Swan’s elbow — just at hand. Swan hadn’t even heard him approach.

‘Although, to be sure, you have nowhere to hide anything that you lust after,’ Dorino said. He leered.

Swan winced. The slaves were looking away. ‘Your collections are the finest I’ve seen,’ he said.

Prince Dorino was already in a chiton and chlamys. The chiton looked a trifle odd on a man of fifty. On his shoulder burned an emerald as big as an acorn, pinning his cloak.

‘Oh, is it the collections that brought you so very early?’ Dorino said. ‘I rather fancied it might be my young cousin Theodora. Hmm?’

A year or two earlier, such a comment might have brought a stammering denial or a blush, but now Swan merely shrugged. ‘A magnificent figure, I agree.’

‘A magnificent figure! I shall tell her. Given your love of the classical, we’ll assume you know whereof you speak, young man. Have you met my daughter, Caterina?’

The young woman in question came closer. Dressed in a long sea-green linen chiton that revealed her arms and the points of her shoulders and hung to the floor, with a belt of pearls and more pearls in her shining black hair, she looked like a painting in the latest Italian style. ‘Goodness! So early!’ she said.

Swan knelt instead of bowing — as he was aware of the limitations of his own chiton from watching Prince Dorino. It hiked up at the back very easily. ‘You are like a vision of Apollo’s sister Artemis of the flowing hair, come to earth to visit us poor mortals.’

‘This is my friend Isabella,’ she said, turning to a dark redhead. That young woman was wearing a deeper green chiton with a peplos, but the sides of her chiton were very slightly open and Swan nearly expired of lust on the spot — though in fact he could see only a finger’s width of creamy flesh.

‘Had I known that such a handsome knight was already in attendance,’ Isabella said with a dimpled smile. ‘My brother thinks you are a dangerous menace to island society. So naturally, I like you.’

Swan went down on one knee again. He had never realised how much padding hose gave him until he had to place his bare knee on a marble floor. ‘Donna, I am your servant.’

‘Just don’t tell me I’m either Aphrodite or Artemis,’ she said. ‘I won’t have either.’ She smiled again, and Swan — unrepentant — stepped offline as if in a sword fight and had another look at her sides.

She raised an eyebrow.

Swan cocked his head to one side. ‘It would be a sin not to look, Despoina.’

It might have been a good line with some girls, but apparently not with Isabella Zambale. Two parties had arrived in the foyer and had been escorted to the hall, and she turned to greet them.

‘Women are odd about flattery,’ Prince Dorino said with a connoisseur’s air. ‘Very discriminating. The flattery has to be … accurate. Except with the easy ones, and then, who bothers?’

Swan re-evaluated his views of Prince Dorino.

‘My cousin was born to the Imperial Purple,’ the prince went on. ‘She cares no more for flattery than she does for religious dogma. It has been her place all her life to receive the plaudits of strangers.’

Swan was at a loss for what to say. ‘I … seek only to do her honour,’ he managed.

Prince Dorino looked at him as if he were a fool. ‘Oh, honour,’ he said. ‘I’m attempting to do you a favour, young man.’

Swan met the prince’s eyes. ‘Why?’ he asked.

The older man’s eyes passed over a huddle of women in the middle of the floor. They were newcomers, and their linen was nearly transparent. They were obviously a little uneasy with their clothing, and thus gathered in a very tight knot. A paean of giggles and protests emerged.

‘Perhaps you remind me so very much of myself at your age,’ the prince said.

Swan winced.

‘Did you see the English ship that made harbour tonight?’ the prince asked with a mercurial change. He took a golden cup of wine from a servitor.

‘No!’ Swan said. ‘Was it called Katherine Sturmy?’

‘Yes,’ the prince said, bowing to a newcomer. ‘The English are everywhere. Is it a good place to live, England?’ he asked.

Swan thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Not as warm as here but … beautiful.’ A wave of homesickness assaulted him and just for a moment he thought of London — of fishing in the Lea and chasing girls over the fields at Lambeth, where the archbishop had his palace south of London and all the brothels were.

‘I suspect that my time here is nearly done,’ the prince said, looking at the assembly.

‘Do you believe the Turks will defeat us?’ Swan asked.

Prince Dorino smiled. ‘What a charming child you are, to be sure,’ he said. ‘The Turks? I mean my son Domenico, who will cheerfully murder me.’

‘Why?’ Swan asked. He could only picture Fra Domenico, who was, surely, too old to be this man’s son.

‘Wealth. Power. And to please the Turks.’ The prince shrugged. ‘Please — drink wine, dance, and if you can manage it, fornicate. These things will make you happier than listening to me.’

‘Would anything convince you to let your fleet cooperate with ours?’ Swan asked.

Dorino laughed. ‘Perhaps to save something from the wreckage — if I believed anything could be saved. My dear boy — this is the end. My world is ending whether I live or die. Christendom has failed.’

Dorino made Swan angry. Swan had few scruples of his own, but he didn’t preach defeatism and he couldn’t imagine that this rich man wouldn’t fight. ‘Why not fight because it is the right thing to do?’

Prince Dorino smiled. Shook his head. ‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘The Turks may be better men. Their government — even their religion — may be better.’

Swan met his eye. ‘Have you ever thought,’ he asked, playing his card as carefully as he could, ‘that there is a traitor, selling Christendom to the Turks?’

‘I think it often,’ Prince Dorino said.

Swan leaned forward. ‘Can you imagine who would do such a thing? Betray Christians to the Turk?’

Dorino laughed his high-pitched, woman’s laugh.

‘I don’t have to imagine. Through my correspondence I have traced three of them who sell us to the Turk every day! The Doge of Venice, the director of the Casa Saint Giorgio in Genoa, and the Pope. Traitors. Every one.’ Dorino made a moue. ‘That’s not who you are after. Eh?’

Swan shook his head. ‘I take your meaning.’

Prince Dorino laughed without mirth. ‘Yes — I think there is a traitor.’ He shrugged. ‘Whether he does more damage then the Pope …’

‘My cousin is a notorious atheist,’ Theodora said. She took the prince’s arm. She was wearing a double-folded chiton — nearly transparent linen, beautifully arranged, and two layers thick, so that sometimes, when she moved, it was modest, and other movements seemed to disclose …

Her skin really was the colour of amber and looked as if it was hot to the touch. Her lips were coral, and her eyes the same peculiar green, and for all her perfection of figure she had immense dignity. When she spoke, she spoke with the effect of careful deliberation.

Swan found that his mouth was hanging open.

‘I would send my fleet to sea to fight for this woman,’ Prince Dorino said. ‘The Sultan wants her.’

‘He has so many Greek ladies in his harem now — what is one more?’ she asked.

Swan clamped down on his intention to flatter. ‘Perhaps he is a collector,’ he said, instead.

Prince Dorino nodded. ‘That is well said,’ he murmured. ‘The young prince here was a great hero at Rhodos, one gathers.’

The princess cast down her eyes and smiled politely.

‘He killed ten Turks.’ Dorino’s voice became like that of an oracle. Swan felt a chill run down his back. ‘Isn’t that splendid, Theodora?’

‘You must be a very great man of arms,’ Theodora said. The compliment bored her — he could see her thoughts going elsewhere.

‘But has anyone asked how the Turks knew to get in under the city in the first place?’ Dorino asked.

Swan scowled. ‘The slaves told them,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Prince Dorino said. ‘Didn’t the Turks arrive and camp simply to hide their intentions? Didn’t they know before they even landed?’

Swan had clenched his teeth. He gestured agreement.

Swan hoped that the prince would leave them alone, but the fete had reached a size that made it worthwhile to start the dancing, and Caterina could be seen going from person to person — the musicians struck up a ‘German’ dance from Milan, and Swan knew it. The Prima Figlia Guglielmino. Two couples danced it as a group of four — very stately, very intimate.

Swan, in his usual way, chose to chance everything on one hazard.

‘May I ask you to dance?’ Swan said. The slightly amused look in her green eyes made him feel like a man who was in a game in which he couldn’t even afford the stake, much less a wager.

‘Well,’ the princess said. ‘As you are a prince — although of two generations of bastardy, I hear tell — and I am a princess, it seems to me that no one is more suitable to ask. So yes, you may.’

It took Swan a moment to work through her beautiful Greek and realise that she had not said yes.

‘Your Grace, would you do me the immense honour of dancing?’ he asked. For the first time in many months, he blessed his father, the cardinal, for enough formal training to play this game at all.

She looked away. If it was meant to be flirtatious, it was the clumsiest flirtation Swan had ever seen. That seemed unlikely. Then she smiled.

‘Is it an immense honour?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said into her eyes.

She sighed. ‘I doubt I’ll find anyone more suitable. May I share a commonplace with you, your grace?’

‘Please do,’ Swan said, inwardly cursing the vaccuousness of his expression.

‘Sometimes, it is tiresome ot be a beautiful princess,’ she said, and allowed him to lead her to the floor with a subtle inclination of her head.

The other couple in his set proved to be the Lady Caterina and the Lord of Eressos. They swept away into the dance, which was, to Swan, a rigorous exercise in etiquette and memorisation. He knew the dance well enough — a few steps in, he was assured that he knew it, and that Zambale knew it, too.

But the women really knew it. The men walked their stately half-circles and the tempo changed, and Theodora, who was the lead woman, performed her movimento, and Swan wanted to cry out at the beauty of her movement — her body, the simple linen — Caterina echoed the movement, and for one measure the two women were hand to hand and eye to eye, and if Swan had been a painter, he would have painted that moment.

And then the women fled, and the men pursued — all to the usual conclusion, except that Swan, on the last place change, took the princess at exactly the same moment that the Graeco-Scot took Caterina — by the waist, raising them and spinning to set them in their places, as if they had been in a Moresca. It suited the music — the women flushed and smiled, and the audience were thunderous in their applause.

‘Hah! Couldn’t have been prettier if we’d planned it,’ Zambale said.

As he was disposed to be courteous, and as the princess had vanished in a crowd of popularity, Swan walked with the Lord of Eressos to the table set with wines and a slave poured him a glass.

‘Do you feel a fool in these clothes?’ Zambale asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘Yes and no. For those of us with muscles to show …’ He left the rest of the comment unspoken. Zambale looked the part of Hector and had no shortage of musculature on display, and women of all ages watched him as they might watch a favourite pony every time he moved.

Zambale nodded. He paused, as if confused, and then said, hurriedly, ‘Would you take me as a volunteer? On your galley?’

Swan frowned. ‘Surely you have duties here?’

Zambale shrugged. ‘No. That is, yes, but I … Dorino is not going to do anything. I want to do something.’

Swan had a certain sympathy for Dorino’s point of view, the more he considered it. The Turks seemed remarkably benevolent — united, just and strong, they contrasted with the Christian states and their petty princes and Church feuds. Simultaneously, he identified with the crusaders and the Knights of St John — England, good King Richard and the evil Saracens were all part of his childhood.

And it was good to do something.

‘I’m sure we can find you a place,’ he said.

‘I want to see a real fight,’ Zambale insisted.

‘You could have my place,’ Swan said. It didn’t sound as light hearted as he’d meant it. Swan had found that there were some limits on courage. He’d begun to fear that some day he might just run out.

Swan danced seven times. He was in demand — as Theodora’s first partner, as an Englishman, and as a novelty. He danced with Caterina, to Prince Dorino’s delight, and he danced with Isabella, with her brother on her other side, a Bereguardo Novo that seemed to go on for ever and in which he was frustratingly close to the princess and never close enough.

Later, wine was served from the magnificent ancient krater that sat in the foyer on a plinth, and Swan hurried to drink twice-watered wine from Candia — and to be the first to bring a small cup to the princess, who took it without comment, a slightly bored flick of her eyes his only reward. He wondered what he had done wrong.

And then Caterina clapped her hands — very like Violetta for a moment — and called all the women her own age together, matrons and unmarried girls too. Swan turned and caught Theodora’s eye on him. Nor did her eyes leave his, once they’d met. So he winked.

She smiled.

She took a step towards him, and he towards her, almost as if they were dancing.

Caterina beckoned to her, and she walked — gracefully — across the marble floor and took her friend’s hand.

‘She’s been married,’ Zambale said. ‘Looks like that, and the Emperor’s daughter — there’s talk she’s to be given to the Grand Turk as a bribe. Or married to the Prince of Persia. Uzun Hasan. You know the White Sheep?’

Swan had never heard of Uzun Hasan, or the White Sheep Turkomans. Zambale was happy to inform him. Swan spent the brief political lesson with his eyes on the most beautiful thing in the room.

And when the women had discussed the possibilities of the last dance, it was decided that they would perform a Verzeppe, a fast, violent dance like a skirmish where three men danced with two women.

He found that his group of three men was himself, Zambale and Prince Dorino, the latter with his cloak cast aside. They danced with Caterina and Theodora. There were four more sets, and all the tables had to be cleared. And the dance was so new that they walked through it four times, with a level of informality that seemed at odds with earlier parts of the fete. But a great deal of wine had been drunk — and faces were flushed. Two men had attacked each other with their fists and been removed; several couples were sufficiently engaged in amorous behaviour that the bishop had taken his entourage and left.

Swan had never been to such a fine party.

The dance itself was like a fight. It was fast — it required coordination, and the fastest element required one of the men to weave his way through the ladies as they turned — this could be balletic or ballistic, depending on the man’s agility and skill. But the opportunities for eye contact and interaction were endless — each man had a moment with the two women in every figure.

Every time his hand met Theodora’s, he felt a pressure from her fingers. And her eyes lingered on his, so that, in the last figure, the prince leaned over to him and said, ‘I’ve always thought that a man who could communicate with a woman by means of his eyes was a man who could govern other men.’

Swan bowed as he passed. ‘That is a fine compliment,’ he said.

‘A lifetime of listening to them, and you become quite expert, my boy,’ Prince Dorino commented, before they were swept apart.

And there was a moment when all five sets were moving together. They’d danced it twice — now even the slowest participants knew the dance — and finally every foot was moving on the tempo; the saltarellos looked as if they’d been performed by professionals, and the men all managed their turns together, and clapped — and Swan was, for a moment, in the heart of the music — turning, weaving, touching hands, and back — turn — a glance from Theodora, and he was so deep in the dance that he had no feeling that he was dancing, but rather, flying. It had happened to him before, fencing, but never in the dance, and he ended it flushed, and full of excitement.

Theodora came and for a heartbeat leaned against him. She smelled … like heaven. A heaven that included young women and jasmine. ‘Don’t disappoint me,’ she said, and pressed something soft into his hand, and walked with dignity to where the prince was congratulating his daughter.

Swan picked up someone else’s cup of wine and drank a draught, and then walked into the first corridor and found a servant, who pointed him to the jakes — up a set of stairs, and past a couple moaning against a pillar. And then through perfumed near-darkness, where sounds of kissing seemed to resonate on every side — it was like having to run a gauntlet of lust.

But Swan smiled the smile of a lover close to his desire. By the light of a resin-scented torch, he opened the cloth in his hand. He looked at it carefully, then folded it away — used the jakes for their natural purpose, and then went back to the torch and looked again.

At some point, the lines came clear. They’d been written in a pretty sepia on linen, and the tiny, perfectly rendered picture of the krater on its plinth told him everything, once he recognised it.

He ran Aphrodite’s gauntlet again, and returned to the hall in time to hear ten local Greek men sing a near-perfect polyphony. He applauded as wildly as every other person, and then they were going to the dressing rooms, where half-naked men fought for possession of enough space to pull on their hose and lace their hose to their doublets. Most of them were dressed magnificently, and Swan was very pleased that the Greek dress had been the theme — his clerical brown would never have won the hand of the fair lady, he suspected.

The Lord of Eressos was dressed long before Swan, and waved at him. ‘I will join you tomorrow,’ he said. There was something in his smile that suggested that he — like Swan — had another errand.

Swan contrived to be among the last men to change, and then he wandered to the table, which still groaned under pitchers of wine, and poured himself a little.

‘You don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave,’ Prince Dorino said, his high voice slurred. ‘Never leave.’ He put a heavy hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘Dance until you die, boy. There’s nothing after this but darkness.’

Swan didn’t have a ready answer.

‘Go on, boy,’ the prince said. ‘Not every night is magical. Fortuna is a fickle bitch.’

Swan put the cup down, and bowed. And then walked through the archway.

He made it through all the turnings — there were six. Outside the door that had been marked, there was a servant sitting in a chair — but even after a magical night of moonlight and dancing, Swan’s brain worked, and he noted that the servant was reading a book in Italian — had curling black hair, and slim feet.

Swan leaned down and kissed her without a word — possibly the boldest thing he’d ever done. Even as her lips explored his, her eyes — wide open — acknowledged that he had been bold, and for a moment he thought that perhaps — perhaps — he had the entire thing wrong and she was going to scream.

She stood up into his arms. She was as strong as a man.

For a moment, with her gold-flecked eyes open under his, Tom Swan’s world was utterly perfect.

Then the bells of the town began to ring — and then the bells on the fortress chapel.

‘Oh,’ she said.

They both laughed. There was no other possible reaction.

A voice in the courtyard yelled, ‘The Turks! The Turkish fleet!’

Swan turned and gathered her in his arms, and she put her hands behind his head. ‘I think you should come back,’ she said. ‘Heroes generally bore me, but you seem-’ she sighed. ‘Like Odysseus,’ she said. ‘Don’t die,’ she added.

Can Tom Swan get the girl? And which girl? Can he stay alive while he catches the traitor, steals the ring, saves the English family aboard the Katherine Sturmy and arranges for the defeat of the Turks?

Probably not. It may be enough if he lives — to get home to his wife.

Content

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