Текст книги "Rhodes"

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Tom Swan and the Head of St George

Volume Five: Rhodes

Christian Cameron

Contents

Cover

Title Page

TOM SWAN AND THE HEAD OF ST GEORGE PART FIVE

The Conqueror’s Ring

Also By Christian Cameron

Copyright

TOM SWAN AND THE HEAD OF ST GEORGE

PART FIVE

The Conqueror’s Ring

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 Bengül 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.