Текст книги "Rhodes"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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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 Bengül. 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.’