Текст книги "Constantinople"
Автор книги: Christian Cameron
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Tom Swan and the Head of St George
Part Three: Constantinople
Christian Cameron
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword
Tom Swan – Part Three: Constantinople
Also by Christian Cameron
Copyright
Foreword
There’s something very . . . historical, about writing an historical serial for e-publication. If it’s been done recently, I haven’t heard about it, and yet it has impeccable historical credentials – before we had the epub, we had the magazine, and in that format Dumas did it, and Conan Doyle, and a host of other authors with magnificent credentials; Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, and Charles Dickens.
It’s a fine format. Instead of a single pulse of seven hundred manuscript pages, the author can write in blocks with independent storylines that may still have an arc and a complex interweb of characters and motivations. I was resistant – but not for long.
So here is Tom Swan, my first serial character. Tom is firmly based in history; Italy was full of itinerant Englishmen, especially soldiers, throughout the period, and so was Greece. I confess that the man who forms the basis for the character was not English but Italian – Cyriac of Ancona, sometimes known as the ‘Grandfather of Archaeology,’ who roved the Levant in search of antiquities and manuscripts that he could beg, borrow or steal for the Pope and other rich clients in their burning zeal to rediscover the ancient world. Ancient manuscripts were then, and remain, incredibly valuable; recent re-discovery of a complete text of Archimedes in a palimpsest shows that such manuscripts are still out there, and give us an idea of the kind of treasures for which Tom Swan – and Cyriac of Ancona – searched.
If this serial has some success, I’ll write more – the format, as I say, is fun, and allows me to explore some nooks and crannies of history – and even some characters that I’d love to take to greater depth; Philokles, in the Tyrant series; Archilogos (Arimnestos’s Ionian adversary) in the Long War series; Geoffrey de Charny in the late Middle Ages – the list goes on and on. And I’ll add pieces rapidly – perhaps even one a month.
Readers of my other books are aware that I’m a passionate re-enactor and also a military veteran, and that these experiences inform my writing. Those who are new to me deserve the following reassurance – I’ve worn the clothes and armour, and shot the bows, and rowed, and even ridden some of the horses. In the process of working as an intelligence professional, I met people who exercise real power every day, and I got an idea of how they work – and how history works. But I don’t do this in a vacuum and I receive an amazing level of support from friends, fellow re-enactors, veterans, academics crafts people and artists. In those last categories, I’d like to thank Dario Wielec, who drew the illustrations; he has a passion for historical detail that delights me every time I see his drawings, from any period, and you can see more of his stuff at http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.ca/. Finally, the ‘covers’ for the Tom Swan series are provided by Albion Swords, who are, to me, the premier manufacturers of accurate replica swords in North America. I use their products every day. How many people can say that – about swords?
Chris Cameron
Toronto, June 2012
Tom Swan – Part Three: Constantinople
Swan had the worst headache of his life. In fact, he found it hard to think, difficult to concentrate, almost impossible to understand what the people around him were saying.
After a long time, he decided that he couldn’t understand them because he didn’t know the language they were speaking.
After more time, he decided that they were speaking Turkish. But that made no sense, as they often used words he knew.
How did I get here? he wondered. He was lying on a divan or a couch of some sort, at the edge of a bare-earth courtyard – like the receiving entrance of a great house. He lay there, watching, while a train of donkeys arrived with baskets of fruit, and then he went to sleep.
Once awake, he realised that he was lying in the servant’s yard of a house. A house in Constantinople.
What happened?
He couldn’t seem to remember. He had gone riding with Idris. Met the man’s sister.
After that – nothing.
Damn.
He went to sleep again.
He woke again, and it was dark. Oil lamps lit a bare room, painted white, with the edges of the walls decorated in bright stucco. There were a dozen people eating on cushions at a low central table.
‘He’s awake!’ said a child’s voice.
He looked at the foot of his couch, and saw a small black boy. He smiled – he couldn’t help himself, the boy was so small and imp-like. The boy smiled back.
A tall African man rose from the table. He approached, and knelt by Swan’s low bed. ‘Can you understand me?’ he asked, in slow Italian.
Swan nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
The African smiled, and the smile lit his face like an internal lamp. ‘Good! I feared that I hit you too hard.’
Swan remembered the man – something about a message.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
The African smiled. ‘Nowhere you need to remember,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
Swan swung his feet to the floor, sat up, and groaned as the blood hit his head. ‘Argh,’ he moaned.
The African snapped his fingers and a veiled woman brought him a tall pottery cup.
‘Drink this,’ he said.
Swan drank.
The drink had the same bitter salty taste as the stuff they’d drunk during the hawking – suddenly he remembered it all. Hawking, Khatun Bengül, the note.
He met the African’s eyes, just as he realised who the man was.
As the drink hit him.
‘Sweet dreams, Englishman,’ said the African. ‘We will not meet again.’
When he came to, he was hot – boiling hot. His skin seemed to give off steam. He had oil on his skin – he could feel it. He smelled odd.
His head was exceptionally clear. There was pain, in his left temple, but mostly this wonderful clarity. The room he was in was dark, perfumed, and a single lamp glowed on a table. It lit magnificent wall hangings full of patterns in which his eyes lost themselves, and a silver lamp that hung, unlit, a ball of reflected sparkles, and in his clarity of sight, those reflections spoke to him of the infinity of spheres that Aristotle said made up the universe.
A shadowy figure passed through a curtain at the darker end of the room and vanished. He heard a murmur of sound. Turkish, certainly.
A new, taller figure entered through the curtain. Walked to the edge of the bed, and sat gracefully beside him.
Her hand touched his shoulder, and ran down his side, to his thigh, and down his thigh between his legs.
‘Hmm,’ Auntie said. She stood and wriggled, and then she was naked, except for a chain around her waist and bangles at one wrist and one ankle. ‘I wish we had a language in common, Englishman,’ she said in Arabic. Her left hand ran expertly up between his legs.
She laughed. ‘Never mind,’ she said and knelt on the bed. She leaned over and her breasts touched his chest. Her perfumed hair fell all around him.
He moaned.
She laughed, and kissed him. A little too hard, and a little too fast. It was as if he was delicate.
Somewhere close, a woman shouted. Another screamed.
Auntie paused. One finger flicked the head of his penis. In Arabic, she said, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ She laughed and slipped off the bed.
Swan, even deep in the throes of lust, noticed that she had a dagger in her hand.
Everything seemed to be happening very slowly. For the first time, it occurred to him that he’d been drugged.
Auntie was magnificent, naked, in the light of a single lamp wick, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. She curved, and curved.
There was a sound of running feet.
Auntie said something softly. Swan would have sworn she said ‘Shit’, in some language or other. She picked her long shawl off the floor and slipped it around her body.
Swan tried to prop himself on his elbow, but he didn’t seem to be in full control of his body. One part of him was working very well – rather embarrassingly well. The rest – refused their duty.
She slipped out through the curtain.
Another scream, and the unmistakable sound of one blade on another.
He tried to get to his feet, and failed. His erection was comic, and he giggled and fell back on the bed. The colours of the wall hangings were deep and vibrant, more like sounds than colours.
Drugged.
He couldn’t stop giggling.
A figure appeared at the curtain. More running feet, and more blades.
A second figure appeared.
‘My poor dear,’ whispered Khatun Bengül, in Italian. And then, ‘My. My, my.’ And a giggle.
Well-muscled arms lifted him. He couldn’t have resisted if he’d wished to.
He was wrapped in a sheet, and thrown over a man’s shoulders. He had the wind knocked out of him.
He could only see the floor.
Through the curtain to a vestibule. Magnificent with gold writing – Persian. There was a corpse, face down, on the tiled floor.
Stairs.
A pool of blood, and blood running down the steps like some sort of ghastly waterfall. At the top of the steps, behind them, lay the African, dead, his head half severed by a scimitar.
And the blood ran on and on, over the tiled floor., down the steps like some ghastly waterfall. Beautiful, in a way.
Good Christ.
The man carrying him ran down the steps and into another hall, and then ran as hard as a man can run while carrying another man.
It was like a nightmare, except that Swan was never afraid. They crossed a courtyard – arched, colonnaded, and magnificent with glazed tiles and fine hangings. Even in his dream state, Swan realised he’d been there before. With horses.
Up. A flight of steps, and there were lights appearing all along the top of the colonnade opposite.
‘Faster!’ said Khatun Bengül.
And then they went through a door, into a blaze of light.
Through a set of beads, and another, and past a great set of double doors of cedar inset with ivory and silver, and then he was unceremoniously lowered into a great trunk, also of cedar. He hit his head, and admired the shooting stars that whirled around him.
Khatun Bengül’s head appeared, framed in the light. ‘My poor Frank,’ she said. Her eyes shifted away. And back. A certain light came into her eyes, and she leaned down and put her lips on his.
He responded instantly. His face rose to hers. The tip of her tongue caressed his, and then she was gone.
Someone slammed the lid of the trunk shut, and he was alone in the darkness.
The extreme alertness didn’t fade, and he heard a male voice – raised in anger, but some rooms away. Perhaps out in the central courtyard. And then another, and a woman’s, shrill as a fishwife’s. All in Turkish.
Then the sound of a man’s hand knocking at the outer door.
‘Khatun Bengül!’ he cried. ‘Khatun Bengül!’ and then a long, calm string of words in Turkish.
He heard her, even across several rooms, go barefoot to the door of her apartments and open it.
Turahanoglu Omar Reis. Even full of whatever he’d been given, he knew that voice.
Khatun Bengül’s father.
Idris’s father.
What am I doing here? Swan thought.
Auntie must be his sister, he thought, his first piece of deductive reasoning in many hours. Things fell into place.
His fearless lassitude fell away, and he was suddenly and completely terrified.
Omar Reis spoke to his daughter for a long time.
A need to piss began to creep into Swan’s hierarchy of needs. And his posture, folded in the trunk, was growing painful. His lower legs were bent back under him. His knees burned.
She said something imperious. Swan had been an adolescent – he knew that tone. She said something like Fine! Do whatever you want.
More footsteps. Male. And many of them.
After a while, he decided that soldiers or servants were searching the place.
‘How dare you! Not in my room!’ she said, with all the drama of the young, in Arabic.
The cedar doors crashed open.
I’m going to die naked, in a fancy trunk, with a raging hard-on. Swan couldn’t decide whether to be more terrified or to laugh aloud.
Drugged. For sure.
Drawers were opened.
A trunk was opened. Then another.
Then a new voice – calm, level, and wheedling.
Idris.
Then Khatun Bengül – a shriek of adolescent righteousness that crossed language and cultural barriers.
In a blaze of light, his trunk was opened.
A crack.
Swan’s fear made him virtually unable to breathe.
Someone’s hand held the trunk open just a little. Idris’s voice – quite close. All Turkish. Swan had no idea what Idris was saying.
He lay there, waiting for the trunk to be opened farther. The top was ajar about the breadth of a man’s fingers.
Khatun Bengül was weeping. She said – something – through her tears.
Idris sounded agitated now.
The fingers inside the trunk lid were those of a middle-aged man – the nails were clean, but there were scars across all four, and a great ring of silver, gold and a blood-red stone engraved – beautifully engraved – with a running horse. In Greek, the letters by the horse said ‘Eupatridae’. The well-born. The jewel of some Ancient Greek aristocrat, two thousand years ago. On the finger of a Turkish warlord. It had to be Omar Reis’s hand.
Swan had time to read the stone, admire its age, and say three Ave Marias.
The trunk slammed shut. He heard Khatun Bengül’s sobs, and her brother’s gentle remonstrances, and then – silence.
Time passed.
His cramps grew greater than his fear, and then his need to piss grew greater than either.
Time passed without a rush of feet, or the blaze of light that would herald his death.
The last footsteps died away – there were no more shouts from the courtyard.
The trunk lid was thrown back, and Khatun Bengül leaned in. ‘My poor Englishman,’ she said. She extended him a slim hand, and he took it, and to his immense mortification, he couldn’t rise out of the box. His feet and lower legs were pinned under him, and there was no feeling in them at all.
‘You must come,’ she said.
He raised himself on his arms, and she pulled on his legs until they came free. He couldn’t feel them at all – it was the oddest, and in some ways the most terrifying, feeling. He couldn’t stand. She couldn’t carry him.
‘You must do better! If my father finds you here, he will have to kill you.’
Swan looked at her for a moment. ‘My lady,’ he said in Arabic, ‘you brought me here.’
She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘So?’
‘I was in no – ahem – danger. Where I was.’ His Arabic wasn’t well suited to the situation. He didn’t know any words to convey anything salacious.
‘Auntie intended to fuck you and then sell you to the Armenians,’ Khatun Bengül said, matter-of-factly, in prim Italian. ‘I assumed you would prefer to remain free and alive.’ She smiled, utterly desirable. ‘Perhaps Auntie’s body is worth your life?’
His legs were beginning to tingle.
‘I can’t move until I get feeling back in my legs,’ he said.
‘Ah!’ she said. She looked him over. ‘Are you always so . . . solid?’ she asked with a giggle.
‘I’ve been drugged,’ he said. He was finding it difficult to sound dashing, romantic, or even clever.
‘I wonder what she gave you?’ Khatun Bengül said. ‘She must have been very . . . exciting.’
His feet were tingling, and his upper legs were hurting. A great deal.
He gritted his teeth. ‘You are far more beautiful than your auntie,’ he said. Time to take the offensive.
‘Bah – you just say that. You would have rutted with her like a dog. Why did I even save you?’ she said. She leaned over him. ‘Are you going to be sick?’
He shook his head. ‘Have you ever gone to sleep on your arm?’
She laughed. ‘I see. So you are in pain.’
‘Yes,’ he said, somewhat tartly.
‘I wish I might discover what drug my auntie used,’ she said. Indeed, his tumescence hadn’t reduced – not from pain, nor time. She sat next to him on the edge of the trunk. ‘How much longer, do you think? Before you can walk?’
He could barely speak. ‘Soon,’ he said, in Arabic.
‘Does it hurt very much?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
She leaned over and brushed her lips against his.
It was remarkable how instantly his concern for his legs and the pain there receded.
Her left hand went around his neck and stroked down – shoulder blade, spine – one nail just scratching along the lines and troughs of his muscles.
Her tongue brushed his.
Her right hand . . .
Voices in the courtyard. She stood up and pulled him to his feet. Flowers of pain blossomed at his ankles and ran down – and up – and he stumbled and fell, despite her grip on him.
But he got a foot under himself. Pushed to his feet.
Grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her. He put his right hand on her left breast, through her robe felt the nipple, and she moaned.
‘Khatun Bengül?’ called a voice in the courtyard. She stiffened.
‘Don’t forget me,’ Swan said. He tried to find something from the Greek poets – something to say – but his brain was on fire with lust and his legs were afire with pain.
‘Khatun Bengül?’ came Omar Reis’s voice.
‘We’re dead,’ Khatun Bengül said. She was clearly shocked to her core. ‘It should be my brother out there.’
‘Window?’ Swan asked.
‘There are no windows in a virgin’s rooms – none that face out.’ She reached for him. ‘We are going to die.’
Swan had the oddest feeling – that this had happened before. Perhaps it had.
Of course, it might be that a doting father would kill only the lover – the foreign lover.
Whose death would nicely suit the political situation, discrediting the embassy.
Christ, I’ve been had at every level. Auntie wasn’t going to sell me to the Armenians. Auntie was going to play the outraged sister and pass me to the Wolf of Thrace.
‘Windows into the yard?’ he asked.
She pointed mutely at the ornate curtained frame visible through her chamber door. It let directly on to the courtyard. He went to it as swiftly as his feet allowed and peered through the curtain. He could see Idris, six feet away, with a sword, and a trio of Turks – hard men with lined faces and curved swords.
‘Khatun Bengül? I’m coming in,’ her father said. ‘My sister is very angry.’
Khatun Bengül was petrified. She wasn’t playacting. She was literally unable to move. ‘I’ll be stoned to death,’ she sobbed. ‘I never thought father would come back. He said . . .’
He looked around. She had her own apartment with her own slaves and servants – six rooms, all of which opened off a single door to the second-floor balconies that lined the arched colonnades of the courtyard. Bedroom, sitting room, clothes room – he was stumbling from room to room, now – slaves, pretending to be asleep, a small workroom with steps going down.
‘That’s the first place they’ll look!’ she cried. ‘The kitchen!’
‘Go and talk to your father,’ he said. He put an arm around her waist and kissed her. ‘We won’t die.’ He let go, and ran down the steps, his unwanted erection bouncing along like an extra limb.
The outer door of the apartment opened. ‘Khatun Bengül!’ roared Omar Reis.
Swan came to the bottom of the steps. There wasn’t even a separate window to the courtyard. He’d have taken his chances with that – but he was in a stone chamber lined with shelves. A pantry.
There were two curtained doorways.
‘If he’s here, he’s a dead man,’ Omar Reis said. ‘Auntie says you have polluted yourself.’
There was something in Omar Reis’s manner – even through his terror, Swan realised that the Turk knew. He knew – everything.
I’ve been had.
Curiously, the knowledge that the Turkish lord had set him up – probably set him up to be caught with the auntie – wheels within wheels – stiffened his spine. He grew calm.
If I get through this alive, I’m going to get that bastard.
He heard the sound of soft Turkish boots on the stone steps.
Two doors.
He slipped through the nearest.
It was dark. He tried to feel his way – silently – around, hoping against hope that there was a trunk, a barrel, anything to give him a chance. He began to consider fighting.
Naked, against a professional.
He stubbed his toe. Hard.
Fell against cool stone, and smelled . . .
Water.
A well cover.
Open. Why not? It was indoors.
Turkish voices. Ten feet away. Two of them.
He jumped into the well.
If you ever want to understand the true meaning of fear, jump into a deep hole in total darkness and test your feelings as you fall.
Swan fell.
His right shoulder impacted heavily on something that hurt him, and then he was in water – deep, cold water. He struck it badly, and it knocked the wind out of him, and he went too deep, sputtering. It was all he could do not to breathe.
He didn’t know which way the surface was. He didn’t know if he had enough air in his lungs to allow him to float.
He was losing it.
A great bubble escaped him – a gob of air lost. It rippled past his face . . .
I’m upside down. Bubbles rise.
He reversed himself, let out another tiny bubble of air, and swam – a panicked, wild, thrashing swim.
But his head broke the surface.
And smacked into something stone, in pitch darkness.
He took three breaths. Then he had to swim, and his fingers hit stone over his head. When he tried a shallower stroke, he hit his head again.
It finally came through.
I’m going to die here. I’m in a well.
He took another breath, and reached up. He ran his fingers across the stone, using his buoyancy to press him against the ceiling. I fell from somewhere, damn it. Somewhere within a few feet was an opening.
He scraped an elbow, bumped his shoulder, and the feeling of the air on his face changed.
His head bobbed free.
There was something under his left hand, and he held it – an edge. For a very long time, he simply clung to the edge, resting. Breathing.
It was a ledge. It was quite wide, and under only a few inches of water.
He reached up as far as he could reach, and there was no ceiling.
He got a knee up on the ledge. It seemed the hardest thing he’d ever done.
He half lay on the underwater ledge for many, many breaths.
Then he got the other leg up. He knelt.
The drug had finally worn off, he was pleased to note.
He crouched on the ledge. He wasn’t dead, but that was about all he could say. He was now bitterly cold and very tired. It was completely dark. Utterly dark.
How, exactly, do I get myself into these things?
He began to explore, cautiously. His rational mind said that he would be weaker later.
His questing arms found a column. He put his back against it and stood cautiously, waiting for the feeling of stone against his head all the way, but when he was standing tall, he felt as if there was still a great deal of space above him.
There was another ledge above the one he was on. It was six feet above him, and he only found it because his hands were feeling for the ceiling. He got his fingers over the edge, and then his hands, and then his arms.
He didn’t make a conscious decision. He jumped, pushed with his arms, and he was lying on cool, dry stone. He instantly revised his chances of survival. This was . . . intentional. This shelf – it was like . . .
A path.
He crawled six feet and felt the drop just in time. The shelf ended abruptly. It fell away to the water.
Swan knew that, at this point, if he went back to the water, he’d die. He was just barely managing to keep the panic in check, but under the clarity of his thinking was an abyss of pain and fear. He was close to losing it. The thought I’m going to die alone in the dark was fully formed and very close.
He turned, with infinite patience, and crawled very slowly back the way he’d come. He knew he was on ‘new ground’ when he came to rock with no water on it. He crawled.
And crawled.
After ten minutes, he knew that he was going – somewhere.
Further, it occurred to him that the air was fresh.
I’m not in a well, he thought. Or rather, hoped.
At the next column, he pulled himself into a crouch, and then sat with his back against the pillar. After a while, his back warmed the pillar. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
He tried to think of Khatun Bengül’s body. Of her lips. Or Violante’s or Tilda’s.
But the darkness was all around him, and he was cold, and it is very hard to be brave in the dark, alone, when you are cold and wet.
But he must have slept.
Because he woke.
And there was . . . light.
Not much light. But after hours of complete darkness, it might have been direct sunlight.
He wasn’t in a well – he was in some sort of underground canal. The canal had a ledge underwater – probably for workmen to stand on while they cleared obstructions and pollutions. Above that was a walkway, on which he’d crawled. He looked back. He could see the end, about forty feet behind him.
He’d crawled forty feet.
He sighed.
He looked down into the water. It was only about six feet deep.
It had a current.
And a few yards away, it flowed out from under an arch. So he’d . . . swum? Been floated? Under that arch.
Somewhere, there would be an entrance. If workmen came here . . .
He got to his feet. His arms were covered in bruises, and he had tender places on his head. His hands looked as if he’d been in a fight.
He started walking.
After what had to have been a mile – an incredible distance underground – there were steps, and then . . .
The tunnel split. The water came down a small waterfall – he flashed on the blood running down the steps, and suddenly he thought, Why did Khatun Bengül kill to get me?
None of it made any sense.
Or rather, it all made a scary kind of sense. Like the sorts of dramas that had played out at England’s royal court.
He turned right, because he had a feeling about how the canal ran. He’d read his classics. The water must come from an aqueduct. That meant – since water flowed downhill – that he was now going east, towards the Venetian quarter.
He had begun to look at every light-hole. They were evenly spaced, for the most part – twenty feet or more over his head. As he walked, he began to make a plan. After a while, he laughed aloud, because if he was planning, then his brain was working, and he didn’t think he was going to die, which was funny, because he was still alone and naked and cold.
But an hour later, he climbed through a set of obstructions into brighter light. He could see people – he’d been hearing them for half an hour. The sides of the cistern had long since collapsed, and become a public fountain, and on one side, a pair of small boys bathed while on the other, their mothers filled jars.
They were Greek women. He could hear them speaking Greek.
He moved carefully behind a pillar.
‘Despoina,’ he called out. ‘I need help, in the name of Christ.’
The two women drawing water startled like deer. They both looked around.
‘I’ve escaped from the Turk. I’m naked, and I need clothes. I promise I can pay. Please help me,’ he said in what he hoped was his most complacent and charming Greek.
The nearer of the two women made a motion with her hand to the other.
‘Show yourself, heretic,’ she said.
He called out, ‘I’m naked.’
‘All the better,’ she said, drawing a knife from her gown. ‘Let me see you,’ she ordered.
Swan emerged from the columns.
She laughed. ‘A Frank! Truly, you are not lying.’ She spat. ‘Why should I save you? You Franks are worse than the Turks.’
‘Money? Save me, and I will pay.’ Swan backed away.
She looked around. ‘Truly? You will pay? So will the Turks, I would guess. Eh?’ she asked, and waved the knife at him.
The other woman laughed. ‘He is young, and handsome.’ She made an obscene gesture. ‘And naked.’
Half an hour later, he was at the gates of the Venetian quarter, dressed as a Greek woman. Silently, head averted, he handed a folded note to the janissary, who passed it in to the Venetian guard.
Alessandro appeared. ‘I’ll answer for this woman,’ he said coolly.
The janissary saluted and smirked, and Swan followed his capitano.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alessandro said.
‘I was set up. I survived.’ He shook his head. ‘I escaped.’
‘How do you come to be dressed . . . like a woman? Like a Greek woman?’ Alessandro asked.
‘It’s complicated,’ Swan said.
Alessandro stopped and shocked him by embracing him. ‘Well done,’ he said.
‘What – well done for not getting killed?’ Swan asked.
‘Given the way things are going, not getting killed gets a pass,’ Alessandro said.
After a lot of sleep, he sat with a cup of wine in Alessandro’s room. ‘This is how I see it,’ he said. ‘Omar Reis planned to use me. His sister planned to use me and sell me, but Omar Reis always intended to make an unpleasant incident of the whole thing. And kill me.’
Alessandro fingered his beard.
‘Had I been caught – red handed, so to speak—’
‘The Sultan might have refused the embassy, or merely used it as a pretext to keep us waiting.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘As if he needs a pretext.’ The Venetian leaned forward. ‘I should send you across to Galata before the Turks send for you.’
Swan looked out into the sunlight. Warm and dry, with wine in him, the whole thing was beginning to seem more like an adventure. ‘I don’t think Omar Reis can admit I was in his house.’
‘He must know. He knows you weren’t here. His janissaries must tell him of every movement here.’
‘Yes – but can he admit that I penetrated his sanctum,’ Swan enjoyed his double entendre, ‘and lived to tell of it?’
Alessandro fingered his beard.
‘What if I never returned?’ Swan asked.
‘What?’ Alessandro said.
‘All the janissary knows is that you brought in a Greek whore.’ Swan finished his wine. ‘I think I’ve thought this through. Give me Peter and some money. I’m going to disappear. And I’m going to get the cardinal’s library out of his house, and maybe some other things.’ He nodded to himself. ‘I may even manage to get these things shipped over to Galata.’
Alessandro nodded. ‘You think you can use the sewers to get into his house.’
Swan was crestfallen that the Venetian saw so quickly through his plan. ‘Yes.’
Alessandro nodded. ‘This is an excellent plan,’ he said. ‘Let me give you a word of advice.’
Swan nodded.
‘Do not – I beg leave to repeat myself – do not seek to avenge yourself on Omar Reis.’ Alessandro rose and poured more wine. ‘We have our date. The Sultan will receive the papal ambassador in three days’ time. We are to leave the city immediately after.’ Alessandro handed him wine. ‘Whatever you do, you must be back in three days. And no revenge. Understood?’
