The Sacred Scroll (52 page)
But Leporo didn’t mind that. He had watched the Venetian fleet fit up and depart for its home city. He saw – for Dandolo had never successfully blinded him to them – the great ocean-going, secret ships, broken up under
Frid’s command. It didn’t matter. With the power he had now, once he had learned it, he could rebuild. What was destroyed could be restored. What was broken could be mended. What was dead could be resurrected.
Even now …
They’d been three days at sea when the corsairs’ sails appeared on the southern horizon, red and white, like Viking sails, only lateen-rigged. By mid-afternoon they were within an arrow’s flight of them. The battle had been fierce but hopeless and, with the heavy freighter, it had been impossible to outrun them. Frid, of course, had fought like a demon, and after the fight he had disappeared, along with his half-dozen Northern countrymen. Leporo hoped he’d been killed or drowned, but a boat was missing from their ship, and the sad truth was probably that he’d managed to get away once the tide of the fight had turned irrevocably.
Leaving Leporo and the surviving Venetian crew to be taken prisoner.
All that a week ago. But now they were sailing slowly along a dusty coast. North Africa. What a dump it looked. A waste of sand and dunes and scruffy grasses growing in untidy clumps. Sailing slowly, because of the freighter,
his
freighter, stolen from him and now in the hands of a skeleton crew of Moorish pirates.
He’d considered escape but abandoned the idea. He was old, he acknowledged. His back and his chest ached all the time, his knees cracked when he walked, his penis was a shrunken walnut between his legs, even his piss came in nothing but a dribble these days.
But he still had time.
He clutched the tablet under his habit. They hadn’t found it in their cursory search.
His
tablet. True, a copy, and hastily made, but a good copy, made with care in five hours when the old doge was sleeping. A miracle that Dandolo had slept so long. And the panic when he woke and found the tablet missing. Leporo had restored it to him with reassuring words. The old man’s mind was going by then. His eyesight, in those last days, had flickered out at last.
The tablet. Leporo knew only the rudiments, but he would learn more. There were documents in Venice, left behind by Dandolo. He would get back, he would read them. They would ransom him from Venice, surely. Dandolo was a hero there, and everyone knew that the monk, Leporo, had been his right-hand man for four decades and more.
The train of his thoughts was interrupted by the rising sun, which soon warmed his back, banishing the night breezes which had robbed him of sleep. There was activity on the deck, sailors bustling and running, most making for the prow. Leporo struggled to his feet and peered ahead. Glimmering, glinting in the sun’s first beams were the domes and minarets of a city.
All the preparations on board now indicated that this was their destination. He caught a word: ‘Algiers’. He had heard of this place. A rich country, as far as he remembered, despite its dismal coastline. As long as he was ransomed and not sold into slavery, all would go well.
The captain appeared on deck, bare-chested, but wearing a silver turban and trousers of the same material. Dressed for disembarkation, thought Leporo, as he
watched his fellow prisoners being roused and organized into ranks, sailors feeding them dry bread and cold water. Fifty of them, all seamen, like their captors. One or two of the Venetians spoke Arabic, and appeared to be getting on well with their Muslim counterparts. They’d get off lightly, if they played their cards right.
Leporo accepted his own bread and water, drank from the wooden beaker, chewed the bread with his old, unsteady teeth.
Just give me the time, he prayed.
A senior officer approached with a colleague, two sailors in tow. A weeding-out of the prisoners was taking place. The most unfortunate, the mortally wounded and the diseased among them, had been thrown into the sea immediately after the battle.
Leporo recognized the senior officer, who did not return his smile.
The corsairs spoke in Arabic. Leporo strained to catch words any words he might understand, but failed.
‘This one?’ asked the senior officer, indicating the monk.
‘One of their mullahs,’ his colleague replied.
‘Explains why he’s still alive,’ answered the senior officer, prodding him. ‘Too old to be worth anything.’
‘Ransom?’
‘What makes you think that?’
Leporo longed for an interpreter, but all his bilingual fellow-countrymen were too far away, on the other side of the ship, and he could scarcely demand one.
‘What are we going to do with him if we land him?’ said the senior officer. ‘He could turn out to be a liability.’
‘We’ve fed him all week.’
‘Time to cut our losses, then. We can afford to, there’s a king’s ransom on that transport.’ The senior officer came to a decision. ‘Throw him overboard. Do it discreetly, don’t want to upset the others.’ Then: ‘You say he’s a mullah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Show some respect then, some mercy. Cut his wrists first. Make it quicker.’
The two sailors were given their orders and took Leporo aft, away from the others, and down a deck, close to the waterline. They unshackled him and pulled his hands free of his robe. As they did so, a small clay tablet fell to the deck. Leporo gave a cry, and stooped for it.
They held him back, firmly. One pinioned him, the other drew his knife and opened the knotted blue veins. Leporo watched as if in a dream. This was not really happening.
Then he felt a rush of cold water, refreshing, strange, and he still couldn’t believe this was happening as the blue sea closed over his head.
The sailors watched for a moment. Then one of them picked up the tablet.
‘What’s this?’
‘He dropped it.’
‘Looks worthless.’
‘Probably one of their relics. Might get a couple of dirhams for it.’
‘Not worth the bother.’
‘All right. Cross to the port side. We’re close enough to the shore. I bet you two dirhams you can’t throw it hard enough to reach the beach.’
‘I accept!’
They regained the upper deck and crossed to the port side.
The sailor who had picked the tablet up took a good look at the shore, barely a slingshot’s distance away, and concentrated. Then he raised his arm, and hurled the tablet towards the land as hard as he could.
Huge thanks go to the people involved with this book at Penguin, Alex Clarke, Sarah Day, Nick Lowndes, Alice Shepherd and Anthea Townsend, for their unswerving support and invaluable input. The same thing goes for my friend and agent, Mark Lucas. My wife, Marji Campi, not only put up with me with patience while all this was going on, but carried out the raw editing with all the rigour it required. I want to thank as well: Daniel Campi; Charles de Groot for advice on financial aspects of the story; and – especially – Peter Ewence.
I found the following books (among others) helpful in preparing the background:
Chronicles of the Crusades
, by Jean de Joinville & Geoffroy de Villehardouin, translated by M. R. B. Shaw; Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 1963
(
I am indebted to M. R. B. Shaw [1890–1963] for the passage from her translation of Geoffroy de Villehardouin at the beginning of Chapter 39)
To the Finland Station
, by Edmund Wilson; Orion Books, London, 2004
The Great Betrayal – Constantinople 1204
, by Ernle Bradford; Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1967
A History of the Ancient Near East
, by Marc van de Mieroop; Blackwell, Oxford, 2007
Hitler
, by Joachim C. Fest, translated by Richard and Clara Winston; Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1983
Without Conscience
, by Robert D. Hare; The Guilford Press, New York, 1999
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First published 2012
Copyright © Anton Gill, 2012
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ISBN: 978-0-141-96448-5
