Текст книги "Venice"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 7 страниц)

Simon received him like a visiting prince, and gave him every centime of three hundred ducats in gold.

Since it was traditional to discount a bill the further it was from its origin, Swan bowed. ‘You are a true friend.’

‘You came well recommended, and in truth, sir, I will send this bill back to my brother to be changed.’ Simon smiled. ‘I assume that you will take a packet of letters back to him?’

‘Of course,’ Swan answered. ‘If we ever leave. The Sultan seems in no hurry to receive the Pope’s ambassador.’

‘A few more days. He is preparing his armament against the Morea. He wants the campaign to begin before he receives the bishop. It is, I’m afraid, the way of the Turkish mind – to deliver an affront to Christendom while receiving Christendom’s ambassador.’ Simon shrugged. ‘Is the ambassador a man of status? Is he intelligent?’

Swan was about to answer honestly when he perceived that perhaps Simon was compromised – or perhaps, living in Constantinople, his interests were very different from Swan’s.

The world was, indeed, a very complex place. And yet, at another remove, not so very different from the world of his mother’s inn. ‘He is a famous man, in Rome,’ Swan said. ‘As for his intelligence . . .’ He shrugged. ‘He’s never said four words to me.’

Lying was best done with a tinge of truth. Uncle Dick used to say that, and it always seemed appropriate.

Simon nodded. ‘A famous man, you say?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘Even in England, I had heard of him,’ he said. Well, that was a lie. But he’d heard of Ostia.

He took the money, bowed agreeably, and escaped as soon as he could, meeting Peter at the gate.

There was a new man near the gate, an Arab in a filthy robe, whose yellow complexion and turtle-like neck would not have recommended him anywhere. His nose was large and pockmarked. His eyes were piercing and far too intelligent for the mean clothes he wore. Swan marked him with a glance, and saw him again, six streets away, emerging from an alley.

Swan walked for an hour, and the yellow-faced man was always there – not every time he glanced, but often enough that, although Swan walked past the cardinal’s house, and noted it well, he didn’t pause. Peter looked at him, and he smiled. They didn’t ask directions – all those hours learning the streets with Rabbi Aaron had had their effect – and eventually they walked past another church, and Swan made a show of being bored. In truth, he was hot and tired – the Jewish quarter was a mile from the Venetian quarter, near the Philadephion at the foot of Third Hill. And Bessarion’s house was in the palace quarter, the oldest part of the city east of the Hippodrome by the Bucoleon Palace. The area was swarming with Turkish soldiers – filthy ghazis, magnificent cavalrymen, janissaries as proud as Lucifer, who were magnificently accoutred in mail, plate brigantines, yellow leather boots and tall felt hats, and yet reminded him of the English archers he’d served with in France.

The cardinal’s house was like a tall palazzo, the portico decorated with original Greek columns from one of the ancient temples, and the windows edged in marble. A man’s head was at one of the windows, but when Swan’s apparently casual glance swept the building a second time, the man’s head was gone.

They walked home.

The moment they turned south, the yellow-faced man was no longer with them. But now Swan saw the tall, thin man from the first days – first waiting ahead of them in the street by the Hippodrome, and then watching them pass, and finally, trailing along behind them all the way to the gates of the Venetian quarter.

He breathed a sigh of relief as they entered the Venetian area.

Peter looked at him. ‘Trouble?’ he asked.

‘We are in over our heads,’ Swan said.

‘More than usual?’ Peter asked.

‘I don’t even know what the game is, much less the stakes,’ Swan said. He told Peter the whole of it, down to Isaac’s comments.

Peter picked his teeth contemplatively. ‘It’s always better to be thought a prince than a beggar,’ he said.

Swan nodded. ‘I know.’

‘But you told him you were a mere soldier.’

Swan laughed. ‘If you were a visiting nobleman in disguise, what would you say?’ he asked.

Peter shook his head. ‘I’m better putting arrows in things,’ he said. ‘Intrigue makes my head hurt.’

Swan stood on the sea wall and looked across the Horn at Galata. ‘Somewhere in all of this is a way to make money,’ he said. ‘I just have to find the right string, and pull.’ He grinned at Peter. ‘I doubt it’s a bowstring.’

Peter shrugged, and continued picking his teeth. ‘Don’t go getting us killed,’ he said. ‘Master,’ he added, as an afterthought.

The next day, Idris sent a note inviting Swan to drink sherbet and ride.

Swan met the young Turkish aristocrat at the gate to the Venetian quarter. ‘No Frank can ride a horse in the city,’ Idris said, as if it was a matter of no moment. He leaned over and handed Swan a bag of carefully woven wool – the bag itself was beautiful. ‘Go and change,’ he said. Behind him were a dozen other Turks. ‘Friends. We’ll wait.’ He grinned.

Swan didn’t need to be told twice. He stepped back into the Venetian quarter and laid out the foreign garments – baggy trousers of cotton, a doublet very like a European doublet, but buttoned, not laced, and a middle-length coat like a jupon. He knew that this was called a kaftan, as he’d enquired. This one was of a rich blue wool, embroidered with flowers, and with buttons of solid silver, shaped like pomegranates. There was a felt skullcap and a turban.

Alessandro came in while he was changing. He wasn’t attempting to hide, and a number of them shared a room. Alessandro looked at him.

‘It is against the law for a European to dress as a Turk,’ he said.

‘Idris will see me out of any trouble with the law,’ Swan said.

Alessandro made a face. ‘You are the only one of us getting anything done,’ he admitted. ‘See if you can keep the costume when your outing is over.’ He pinned the skullcap against Swan’s head with a dextrous finger and began to wind his turban.

‘These were all the rage in Venice when I was a boy,’ he said.

The stirrups were short, the saddle virtually non-existent, and the other Turks laughed at his attempt to lengthen the leathers. A servant – a Turkish servant – slapped his hand away and motioned for him to mount, and he did, vaulting into the saddle because the stirrup was so high above him he couldn’t dream of getting a foot into it.

Once he was up, the servant tucked his booted feet into the very light stirrups.

Idris pulled up next to him. ‘I have ridden on one of your knight’s horses,’ he said. ‘It is like riding in a sedan chair. With us, you must actually ride the horse.’

Swan was not a great rider – life in London offered little scope for riding, and his periodic time with his father hadn’t offered him any more than a cursory education. The small saddle made him uncomfortable, and he almost missed the ride out of the city, he was so focused on staying on the horse. The Turks were all superb horsemen, and they galloped, cantered, walked and trotted, changing gaits to suit the length of the street and the thickness of the crowd.

On the other hand, the Arab mare he was riding was, without a doubt, the best horse anyone had ever put him up on. The horse was small by European standards – like a lady’s riding horse – but she seemed to carry him without effort, and she flowed along under his inexperienced seat without offering any protest. At one point, on a long straight stretch just before the Belgrade Gate, when the other young men were galloping and an old beggar stepped into the road, she pivoted neatly under him and then – it seemed to him – rolled her own hindquarters to keep him in the saddle.

By the time they had crossed the great walls, heading for the farm country to the west, he was in love, and although there was no one to tell him so, he was riding better than he’d ever ridden in his life. And enjoying it.

Idris was laughing with his friends, and servants met them – a pair of carts with a dozen hawks and two more young men. But after they had reined up and let the carts join them, Idris came back down the cavalcade to Swan. ‘Do you like her?’ he said, pointing with his jewelled crop at the mare.

‘I love her, Idris. She is . . . superb.’ Swan grinned.

Idris grinned back. ‘You English are so honest!’ he said. ‘You are like Turks. You think a thing – you say it. Venetians never tell me this horse is wonderful. They are always cautious.’ He looked at the horse. ‘To us, her colour is not so good. That golden coat – we call it yellow – is . . .’ He shrugged. ‘But she is among the smartest of my horses.’ He leaned over. ‘I beg you to accept her.’ He frowned. ‘Or anything else you see that you want.’

Swan laughed. If only you knew, he thought. ‘I love the kaftan,’ he said.

Idris nodded. ‘All that is yours. You cannot ride without it. Indeed, all of your guards know now that we are friends. If you are found in these clothes . . .’ He smiled again. ‘Call for me.’

‘You are very like a prince, I find,’ Swan said.

Idris shook his head. ‘Now you sound like a Venetian,’ he said. ‘Flatterer. Listen – of all my friends, none speaks Italian. So none of these men can speak with you, but all know that you saved my life.’ The other young men bowed from their saddles or saluted with their riding whips as they were introduced – a long string of Turkish names that even Swan had trouble understanding, much less remembering.

Swan’s training as a royal page came in handy. He understood – intimately – that Idris was the great man here, and that he couldn’t monopolise him. So he bowed to the various Suleymans, Murids and Bazayets, and smiled at all of them, and occupied himself riding.

Idris rode superbly, of course. He took a hawk on his wrist and offered another to Swan, who had to profess complete ignorance.

‘Another time I’ll teach you,’ he said. He looked grave. ‘See you at lunch.’

And he was off. He loosed his bird at a series of ground targets, and Swan felt this was vaguely at odds with English practice, but then the prince sent his largest bird into the air after something that was a speck above them, and then the whole cavalcade galloped away across the fields of the Greek farms that ringed the fallen city.

Swan reined his little mare in and stayed with the carts. He noted that the two men who’d joined with the carts – also obviously gentlemen, in that they had rich kaftans and jewels in their turbans – both stayed with the wagons. The nearer young man – a boy, really – flashed a smile at him, and he bowed in the saddle. His mare misinterpreted the shift in his weight forward and went directly to a gallop, stretching away over the fields to the south, towards the sea.

It might have been exhilarating, except that, at the very moment when the horse exploded into motion, Swan’s foot slipped out of his left stirrup. He sat down, hard, and tried with increasing panic to find the stirrup under his left foot. The little mare turned in a very tight circle to the left, and suddenly he hit the ground.

He lay there and his shoulder hurt. And he felt like a fool. His mare came and stood by him.

After a moment, he heard hoof-beats, and suddenly one of the boys was there. He dismounted from a dead gallop, actually running alongside his horse for two or three paces, and flung himself down by Swan.

‘Are you alive?’ the Turk asked in a lilting Italian.

Swan looked up into the Turk’s eyes.

Eyes with smudges of kohl around the thick lashes. Wide-set, deep brown eyes above a slender, arching nose and a heavy, sensual mouth.

‘You are not a boy,’ Swan said. ‘Oh, my neck hurts.’

She laughed good-naturedly. ‘How . . . kind of you to notice,’ she said. ‘Are you unbroken?’

He sat up.

The second boy was riding towards them. ‘It is – how do you Italians say this? A polite fiction that I am a boy today. Yes?’

Swan rotated his head from side to side. ‘A fiction I will endeavour to maintain, demoiselle,’ he said gallantly. Her very palpable presence at his side – her hand on his arm – reminded him that he hadn’t talked to a woman in two weeks. The siege had emptied the great city of women – there weren’t even prostitutes in the Venetian quarter.

She put a strong hand in his hand and hauled him to his feet. His horse was two steps away, and he mounted as efficiently as he could manage. He knew he looked like a fool to the Turks. He couldn’t help it.

‘My brother has given you this mare?’ she said.

‘Khatun Bengül!’ shouted the second ‘boy’. In Arabic.

‘Shush!’ the Turkish woman said. ‘I am Salim.’

‘You touched him.’

‘He was on the ground and needed help.’

‘And now he knows you are a woman!’

‘You shouted my name across the world!’

‘He is a Frank. They are as stupid as cattle.’ The second woman was ten years older than Khatun Bengül, and several inches shorter. Under her mantle and turban, Swan judged her to be every bit as attractive, with beautiful eyes and high cheeks. Khatun Bengül, however, had a translucent skin that Swan had seldom seen – hers was the colour of oak newly split – not white, but like slightly aged ivory – and her brows were black and strong.

He was staring.

‘Now he will be besotted with you, you little witch.’ The older woman laughed.

‘He does not seem very stupid, Auntie,’ Khatun Bengül said.

‘Bah – all Franks are stupid. I’ve owned dozens. Look at him. He can’t even ride properly.’ The older woman gave him the once-over. ‘Handsome, though. Look at those lips.’

The two women tittered together.

Swan, who had laboured for months at Arabic, had a sudden love for the language that no amount of Rabbi Aaron’s teaching could ever give him.

‘I like his hands,’ Khatun Bengül said.

‘Perhaps we might ride back to the carts?’ Swan said in Italian.

Khatun Bengül nodded.

‘But he rides like a sack of camel shit. Really. What do they teach Frankish boys?’ Auntie asked.

The falconers returned an hour later, and they ate a sumptuous picnic of mutton with a dozen sweet things and some spices that Swan loved, and chicken. They all drank an odd, salty drink that Swan disliked at first taste, but grew used to with practice.

‘What is it?’ he asked Idris.

‘The drink?’ Idris asked. ‘It’s just . . . milk. Hmm. And some salt and spice and water.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a word I don’t know in Italian. When milk . . . isn’t milk any more.’

‘Cheese?’ Swan asked.

Idris shook his head.

After lunch, the falconing party rode off again, leaving Swan with the servants. He didn’t mind – he rode his mare into the fields, going more slowly then faster, changing gaits – learning to ride.

He was resting, drinking more of the salty drink from a glass bottle provided by a servant, when he heard the auntie shriek.

‘You cannot, you hussy. Your father would burst himself. He’ll gut me – and you.’

Khatun Bengül – if that was her name – appeared around the wagon, riding as if she was a satyress – the image came quite spontaneously to Swan. There was something erotic in the way she rode.

‘You do not fly the falcons?’ she said in her curious and, to him, very beautiful Italian.

‘I do not know falconry,’ he said, smiling his most ingratiating smile.

‘I could teach you a little,’ she said. ‘We are not . . . expected to gallop over fields. But I was going to fly my birds.’

Her aunt rode around the side of the wagon.

‘Look at him – he knows you are a woman. It’s written all over him,’ said Auntie, in Arabic. ‘Listen, my little filly. I was young once, too.’

‘You are a coarse old woman,’ Khatun Bengül spat. ‘I want to teach him to fly a bird.’

Auntie said something in Turkish.

Khatun Bengül flushed.

Swan would have given a year of his life to know what had been said. He turned the sounds over in his head – one of his special skills, and the reason he could learn languages so very fast. As fast as the two women could spit at each other, he processed the syllables. He had no idea what they meant. But he would.

Auntie seemed to be backing down.

‘If you would care to ride with us,’ Khatun Bengül said, ‘my auntie will keep a very careful watch on us.’ She spat the words.

‘Don’t think I can’t understand when you talk love words to the dirty Frank,’ said the auntie.

Khatun Bengül flushed red. ‘This is Italian,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with love.’

However, despite their inauspicious beginning, the next hour was a pleasure. Khatun Bengül flew her two small birds with expertise, gossiping in Arabic and Turkish with her aunt on the one hand and coaching Swan to fly a gyrfalcon on the other in Italian. And when the gyrfalcon, tired of his inept hand motions, bated, and then slipped his jesses and flew into an oak tree, the women laughed, and Swan laughed, and when he dismounted, stripped out of his kaftan and climbed the tree, successfully retrieving the bird, the two women clapped their hands together as if he were a conjuror.

‘He really is handsome,’ Auntie said. ‘Pity he isn’t a slave.’

That took the wind out of Swan’s sails. Auntie was looking at him with the sort of appraisal with which older women had been examining him since he had turned fourteen, and ordinarily he’d have arranged . . .

But he couldn’t take his eyes off Khatun Bengül.

Perhaps fortunately for all of them, Idris returned shortly after the adventure of the gyrfalcon and the tree.

He clapped Swan on the back. ‘I see you have learned the first lesson of falconry – how to retrieve a lost bird,’ he said. ‘You have done this before?’

‘One of the boys is teaching me,’ Swan said.

Idris laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘My father will indeed have us all killed,’ he laughed. ‘You know she’s my sister, eh?’

Swan sighed. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘And a force of nature,’ Idris acknowledged. They had turned their horses towards home. Most of the Turks had mounted a second horse.

‘She was very . . . courteous to me,’ Swan said.

Idris laughed, his head thrown back. ‘She makes boys bark at the moon,’ he said. ‘Ah, my Englishman. Do not cast languishing glances on my sister. She spits on the men who worship her.’ He took a flask out of his kaftan, drank, and handed it to Swan, who drank. Greek wine – sweet and strong.

‘All the good Persian poets were drunks,’ Idris said. ‘I’m working on it.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, Holy Koran forbids it. Or so my imam insists.’

Later, after they had passed the Belgrade Gate, Idris said, ‘Listen – I owe you my life, but you must never mention that my sister was here today. When I saw her . . . never mind.’

‘I will swear,’ Swan promised.

‘It’s a hard life for her,’ Idris said. ‘In Thrace, when my father is commanding an army, she rides like a man – shoots a bow, sleeps on the ground. It is how we were raised. My mother – she was a tribal woman, you know?’

Swan didn’t know, but he nodded.

‘Owned her own horses. Owns farms in Anatolia. So we were raised to the saddle. And in this cursed city, poor Khatun Bengül must pretend to be a good girl, a nice girl who stays at home and has slaves take money to the poor, who never shows her face, who never rides a horse.’ Idris shrugged. ‘We don’t always get along.’

Khatun Bengül leaned in from Swan’s other side. ‘He uses me to protect him from Father,’ she said.

Swan looked at her. When he breathed in, he tasted her scent over the smell of flowers and grass and horse.

‘She uses me to protect her from Father, too,’ Idris said.

‘I am a nice girl,’ Khatun Bengül protested. ‘I just like to ride.’ She shrugged. ‘And I can do anything a man can do. Better. Men are all fools.’ She tossed her head.

Behind them, all of Idris’s friends were watching her.

Swan took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Every one of us.’

‘Sufia will be in our stables – but available for you at any hour,’ Idris said. They rode past the great aqueduct, through the forum of Constantine, and past the north end of the Hippodrome to the great houses beyond Hagia Sophia.

Swan breathed a sigh of relief when his horse was not stabled in the great cathedral. Sacrilege had its limits.

They rode into the palace quarter and dismounted in the courtyard of a fine square of buildings. Workmen were facing the front of the stables with beautiful fired tiles in a rich blue with the trailing cursive of Persian script. Less than a hundred paces away, a tall minaret was being built on to a low Byzantine church.

Swan handed his horse to a pair of slaves. He put a hand familiarly on Idris’s arm. ‘You have your friends,’ he said. ‘I should go.’

Idris bowed. ‘You are a good guest. Will you come riding again?’

Swan smiled. ‘My lord, the bishop will probably give birth to a cow when he hears that I spent the day with infidels.’

Idris laughed. ‘Tell him my father will have his guts ripped out of his fat stomach if he stops you.’

Idris meant these words as a joke, but they chilled Swan.

Idris leaned closer. ‘Listen – you know this is all a sham? Don’t you? In the spring, my father will lead an army into the Morea and we will take everything Venice has. It’s not even a secret.’

Swan struggled to maintain his composure.

‘Don’t let it come between us,’ Idris said. He smiled. ‘I treasure you. Come ride with me again tomorrow.’

Swan bowed low. ‘I’ll try.’

He was pleased when several of Idris’s friends offered him casual salutes. As if he was a person. Others remained studiously aloof.

He turned and crossed the courtyard. But Auntie blocked his route with her pony. She smiled at him.

He smiled back at her. It was his habit to smile at any pretty woman who smiled at him.

‘She’d like to have you in her bed,’ Khatun Bengül said. ‘But she doesn’t know how to ask.’

Swan, seldom at a loss for words, had none for this situation.

Khatun Bengül laughed. ‘You flush like a girl,’ she said. ‘Will you come and fly a bird with us another time?’

Swan bowed. ‘Perhaps, if my duties allow. The company was . . . divine.’

‘Divine?’ Khatun Bengül tittered. ‘Now, from one of these young men, that would be blasphemy.’

Swan wasn’t sure whether he’d scored or not. So he smiled, bowed again, and walked out the gate.

Despite feeling utterly smitten, he walked straight into the alley that separated Omar Reis’s palazzo from the next magnificent structure and walked south. He was disappointed that his sense of direction had failed him – he didn’t emerge into the street on which Bessarion’s house was situated. He looked behind him, and at the cross-street. He didn’t see any sign of Yellow Face or Tall Man, as he had christened them.

So he followed the next alley south.

There was Bessarion’s house. It rose three stories above the street, and was surrounded by a high wall. There were outbuildings – a stable, a slave or servant quarters, and perhaps a workshop.

He walked all the way around the compound. The gates were locked. There were beggars living in the arch of the front gate.

He paused.

‘Effendi!’ said one woman. ‘Do not harm us!’

‘Do you speak Greek?’ he asked in that language.

All of their faces brightened. There were four of them – filthy, but well enough fed, he imagined.

‘Whose house is this?’ he asked.

The old woman shrugged. ‘Some dead Frank,’ she said.

‘No infidel lives here?’ he asked.

They looked fearful.

‘Has a Turk taken the house?’ he insisted. He was dressed as a Turk – the word infidel could go either way.

‘None yet in this street,’ the old woman said.

She was obviously concealing something.

He dug into his kaftan and produced a silver byzant of some value or other – the Turks hadn’t produced a coinage yet, and Byzantine coins were notoriously debased. But it must have some value.

He tossed it to the old woman. ‘How can I get in?’ he asked.

She looked at the coin.

‘I can come back with janissaries,’ he said.

She looked terrified. ‘Effendi – we live in this gate.’

‘You may continue, for all I care,’ he said.

‘We know how to open the gate,’ she said.

He produced another coin.

But it was all taking too long. And it was late afternoon, and the Turks were hurrying to the little mosque for prayers, and suddenly the once-empty street was full.

‘Perhaps another day,’ he said, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Something felt wrong. He didn’t know what, but something felt wrong.

He walked all the way to the Venetian quarter. He was afraid that he’d be stopped because of his Turkish dress, but no one stopped him. In fact, a janissary in the street saluted him.

It was almost dark by the time he reached the Venetian Quarter.

He sat in a tavern with Giannis, Alessandro and Cesare, and related the events of the day. He left Khatun Bengül out of it.

When he spoke of the spring campaign against Venice, Alessandro swore.

‘I heard the same from some of the Jews,’ Swan said.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Foscari is so focused on the war in Italy, he’s forgotten the Turks and how perfidious they are.’

Giannis agreed.

Swan took a drink of wine. ‘They seem . . . fairly straightforward to me.’ He wanted to say ‘compared to Italians’ but he knew the audience was wrong.

Alessandro sighed. ‘If only the bishop were not a complete fool,’ he said. ‘I feel I cannot share this with him.’

Giannis scratched at his hairline. ‘I could perhaps rent a boat. Go to Galata, and inform Ser Marco.’ He shrugged. ‘But I couldn’t come back.’

‘Surely they know?’ asked Swan.

‘Let me speak on behalf of my beloved Signoria,’ Alessandro said. ‘We are a nation of sea merchants, most of whom would sell their mothers as whores to make a profit. Money, and the search for money, has its own blindness. And its own pitiable lack of scruple. If a Venetian thinks he can make a profit . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps some know, but conceal the knowledge. Perhaps others close their minds to the news.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is inconvenient,’ he said.

Giannis spat carefully. ‘In the Morea, we say that the difference between a Turk and a Venetian is that at least the Turk believes in something,’ he said.

‘Blessed Virgin,’ Swan said.

‘You must go,’ Alessandro said. ‘I cannot – my absence would be obvious. Swan would be missed by his Turkish friends, and so far, he’s the only one of us to see the cardinal’s house.’

Giannis finished his wine. ‘I’ll be in Galata before the sun rises,’ he said.

‘It’s after curfew!’ Alessandro said.

‘Give me your Turkish clothes,’ Giannis said.

Swan thought for a moment. ‘I love that kaftan,’ he said, but Giannis, who hated everything Turkish, assumed he was kidding.

At nightfall, the janissary at the gate sent for Swan. When he presented himself, the janissary bowed, and handed him an ornate parchment. A firman. A pass, signed in Persian script, for Thomas Swan, Prince of Britain.

At daybreak, an African servant handed a note into the Venetian quarter asking Swan to come for a ride in the countryside. The note was unsigned. On the back, in neat Italian, it said, ‘Come in secret.’ Swan smiled to himself.

‘Cover me with the bishop?’ he asked Alessandro.

Alessandro nodded. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was a woman involved.’

Swan wondered how it was that this foppish Italian could read his mind. ‘No,’ he said, lying.

However, being besotted with Khatun Bengül, whose deep brown-black eyes had occurred in every dream he could remember from the night before, didn’t prevent Swan from leaving the Venetian quarter with all the care his youth had taught him.

First, he no longer had Turkish clothes.

Secondly, he didn’t want his watchers – Yellow Face and Tall Man – to see him at Idris’s palazzo. Once they had followed him there, they would watch the place.

It was early. He was in European clothes, and he took a dagger under his doublet. Then, before the side streets were full of vegetable stalls, he climbed up on the wall that separated the Venetian quarter from the Amalfian quarter, and without too much thought, jumped down inside. He walked across the Amalfian quarter, drew some cautious stares, and duplicated his efforts, jumping on to an awning in the Pisan quarter and receiving a torrent of abuse from a young man with a Florentine accent. He mollified the man by buying an apple.

The Pisans, as he’d noticed a few days before, had a tower by their gate. He climbed the tower – empty at this hour – and looked down into the busy square outside the European quarter.

He didn’t recognise anyone outside the gate.

He passed the Pisan sentry without being challenged, and walked rapidly towards the Hippodrome. He passed the Severan Wall at the first gate and breathed a sigh of relief. The two janissaries at the gate looked at him carefully, but let him go.

East of the wall, he followed the broad main thoroughfare towards the magnificent bulk of Hagia Sophia. He couldn’t see whether he was followed, but the great avenue was packed with early morning traffic to the market north of the Hippodrome, and he slipped from cart to cart, trying to be both invisible and normal. He was the only man on the street in European dress. But he didn’t regret it – he didn’t believe he wore the Turkish dress well enough, and didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to arrest him.

His intention was simple – to use Idris’s morning ride to cover a visit to Bessarion’s palazzo. The groundwork was laid – he had a dagger and a purse with twenty ducats to buy the co-operation of whomever he found on the premises.

And he was going to see Khatun Bengül. He was sure of it. He hoped . . . well, it seemed possible she’d sent the note. Idris, after all, came in person.

A regiment of janissaries was forming on the open ground south of the Hippodrome, as well as sipahis – the elite cavalry of the Ottomans. He was pleased to note that few of the sipahis had a horse as pretty as his mare. He thought of her as his own.

He made his way through the crowd, feeling safer, and walked south around the cathedral and the Patriachate to come on Omar Reis’s palazzo from the east for safety.

He was as cautious as youth and love could make him. But he didn’t see the two faces he dreaded – nor would he have said that he’d spotted any figure, Turkish or Greek, out of place, or two places well separated in time.

The great gate of Omar Reis’s palazzo was shut, but as he approached, he saw the African from the sunrise visit beckon from a postern gate. He walked along the wall, took one last look over his shoulder, and ducked through the iron-studded door.