Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople (7 page)

Like a palace, reproduced as a piece of furniture.

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

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

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

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

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

Swan saw him pause in his progress across the floor.

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

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

Uh-oh
.

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

Alessandro looked at him.

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

I’m an idiot
.

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

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

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

Mehmet nodded.

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

The bishop narrowed his eyes.

Most of the embassy were holding their breath.

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

Every Turk in the hall laughed.

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

Mehmet smiled benevolently at them.

Omar Reis looked at Swan.

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

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

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

The bishop nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The doors opened.

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

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

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

Alessandro eyed the crowd.

Swan said, ‘We’ll never get through.’

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

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

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

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

‘There will be a stampede!’ Swan said.

‘Yes,’ Alessandro said. ‘Do it.’

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

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

The slaves stopped pressing in.

There was a moment . . .

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

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

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

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

He drew his sword.

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

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

The bishop began to weep.

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

An arrow struck her, and she fell.

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

No arrows touched him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swan looked at the Turks. ‘I—’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She stared at him, blank eyed.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I forbid you to kill them,’ he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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