Текст книги "Constantinople"

Автор книги: Christian Cameron

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Swan nodded. ‘Of course not. That would be stupid.’

An hour later, he had exchanged notes with Simon. Several hours later, a Greek wine merchant came into the Venetian quarter, and sold Candian wine to the Venetians by the hogshead from two wagons. A servant jumped down from the rear wagon and found Alessandro, and gave him a package.

Alessandro handed it over to Swan. It contained a set of directions and a full set of clothes – ragged, Greek clothes. Swan shook his head. ‘When do I get to dress well?’ he asked, and became a ragged Greek veteran, a penniless beggar. Peter became another such.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Your whole plan depends on this Jew.’

‘Yes and no,’ Swan said. ‘I have something for him, as well.’ Then he and Peter went into the shadow of the gate.

Together, they waited their moment, and while the Greek wine merchant’s wagons stopped by the janissary, they slipped out.

The two of them moved carefully. Peter was too tall to avoid notice, but Swan needed him.

He almost laughed aloud when a pair of Greeks stopped and gave them alms.

‘At least you fought,’ said the elder. He clasped Peter’s hand.

‘He’s lost his voice,’ Swan said. ‘We fought, and we’ll keep fighting.’

The two men looked both pleased – and guilty. They handed over more coins and walked away quickly.

Peter shook his head. ‘They’re afraid,’ he said, in French.

Swan followed the route as laid down by Simon. He assumed that Simon was having them watched, checking to see that they were alone. He hoped so.

After walking over half the city, they came down Third Hill on a steep street. As they descended, a heavy grain wagon pulled across the narrow street. A pair of men jumped down.

They had crossbows.

‘Get on,’ said the one who looked as if someone had burned his face off.

The second man stood well clear of them. A small boy in the back of the wagon lifted the edge of a tarpaulin and they slipped in under the load of hay. It was stifling hot, and Swan immediately had to sneeze.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Peter.

The wagon rattled and clanked over the streets. It had no suspension, and Swan’s head cracked against the bottom several times before he found a better way to lie. He sneezed and sneezed, and one of the guards ordered him to be quiet.

Peter put a linen coif – none too clean – over his mouth. ‘We’re passing a guard post,’ he hissed.

Swan managed to keep his sneezes to himself for a hundred long heartbeats, and then the wagon was moving again.

Moments later, the top was stripped back, and Simon was standing with six armed men.

‘What have you done?’ he asked. But he seemed more amused than anything. ‘You promised me a secret and a profit in your note,’ he said.

Swan sneezed.

Later, dressed in an ornate robe and curly slippers, Swan leaned back on comfortable cushions.

‘So you are an agent of the cardinal,’ Simon said.

‘Perhaps,’ Swan said. ‘My only orders are to retrieve his library. Can you help me?’

Simon rocked his head from side to side. ‘Perhaps. It is risky. Everything is watched right now. You know that a great many of the Christian relics have gone missing – from Hagia Sophia, from the monasteries, from private houses. The Sultan is furious.’

‘None of my concern. I’m here for books. When I’m done, you may have the house,’ Swan said.

Simon made a face. ‘Is it yours to give?’

‘Of course,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll have your brother send you a deed.’ He shrugged. ‘A palace near the Hippodrome for some information and a little smuggling . . .’

Simon lay back and drank quaveh.

‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘I get you to the house from the Venetian quarter. You go inside and prepare the items you want to ship. I ship them to Galata for you, and I keep the cardinal’s house.’

Swan nodded.

It was an excellent plan, and the only hitch he could see was that Simon planned to sell him out. He could see it on the man’s face. Damn it.

Why are people so greedy?

‘How long will you be?’ Simon asked.

‘At least a week,’ Swan answered, an utter lie. In his head, he’d already discarded Simon.

‘That long?’ Simon said. ‘Why?’

‘It will take me that long to figure out what to take and what to leave,’ Swan said, embroidering as he went. ‘I’ll contact you when we’re ready. You get us from the Venetian quarter to the cardinal’s house. I’ll take care of the rest.’ In fact, in his head, he was already moving on to his next plan, but he needed to part amicably from this man before he chose to betray Swan immediately.

He and Peter said their goodbyes, and slipped out of the Jewish quarter at the guard change. They were followed.

‘He’s going to sell us,’ Swan said.

Peter sighed. ‘I wondered.’

‘We have to disappear. Luckily, we can.’ Swan took a deep breath. ‘Let’s buy food.’

They walked back towards the Venetian quarter. Swan’s fear at every corner was that the two men following them – Simon’s men – would sell them to the Turks on the spot, but they made it to the market, and purchased meat pies. And then they cut across the ruins of the old Forum – down the steep sides of the collapsed fountain, and into the sewers. No one following them had had a sightline. Or so Swan had to hope.

An hour later, they were in the underground cisterns, eating meat pies made of the same parts of the cow and the pig that were used in meat pies in London. There was more pepper, but the taste was strangely familiar.

Peter looked at the apparently endless arches receding into the distance. ‘This was built – by men?’

Swan slapped him on the back. ‘I’m glad you like it. We’ll be down here for a long time.’

As it proved, it took them two days and a night to find Bessarion’s house and explore the system. They were involved in necessary adventures, including the theft of a ladder from a monastery and carrying it underground and above ground for almost a mile; another theft of rope, and a tedious amount of sneaking through alleys, dropping coloured cloth through the gratings and then hurrying below to see where, exactly, they were.

Once, Swan had to hope his Greek was sufficient, and went above to purchase supplies. He walked carefully, watched carefully, and dealt with the deafest old woman he could find in the main market by the Hippodrome.

When they were sure – reasonably sure – that they had the right well, Swan lay on the walkway, on a stolen blanket, and drew a map of every part of the sewers and cisterns as he knew them. As far as he could see, the canals were underground cisterns carrying water from the aqueducts to supply the Hippodrome and the palace quarter and any houses lucky enough to be along the major water routes. Great houses simply had a well cover that opened into a shaft that ran down into the cistern. Some houses had private cisterns – and there was more than one cistern system, and they didn’t all link up. Or rather, in the time he had, Swan couldn’t see where they linked, and he and Peter often had to cross an alley or a small hill above ground, carrying all their tools, stumbling, lost in a darkened city.

The main canals, or cisterns, had iron rings every so often, and nautical bollards at intersections, clearly for tying small boats against the current. Swan couldn’t discern whether there were still maintenance crews working. As far as he could see, the newest stonework was two hundred years old or older, and there were four major cave-ins unrepaired.

‘We need a boat,’ he said, as he sketched his map.

Peter shook his head. ‘People built this?’ he said again. He found wonder in everything – the grafitti, the underground mosaics, the bronze fittings where no one could see them. ‘No one is this rich.’

‘The old Romans were this rich,’ Swan said.

‘Imagine fresh water in every house,’ Peter said.

‘We need a boat,’ Swan insisted.

‘I’ll just steal one on the waterfront and carry it through the streets, shall I?’ Peter asked.

Swan stopped drawing, the charcoal pinched in his fingers. ‘Mary and Joseph,’ he said. ‘There must be a water gate.’

Peter’s head came up. He grinned.

‘I know who can get us a boat,’ Swan said. ‘Let’s cast east.’

It took the rest of the day, but they found that the eastern branch of the sewer did indeed run down all the way to the sea. It ended at a grate like a portcullis, strong iron carefully wrought. The water ran out into the sea.

Swan’s legs hurt from climbing and crawling, but he looked at the sea with infinite satisfaction. ‘Thalatta, Thalatta,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Peter asked.

‘That’s our way out, my friend.’ Swan watched for a while, and began to search around the water gate for signs of use.

There were several.

Very cautiously indeed, he pushed against the great iron gate.

He found scratches on the floor that proved it had been opened. Repeatedly, and recently.

He climbed up the rough stone inside the gate, and near the top he found the simple bolt that held it fast. He released it, felt the heavy iron start to swing, and shoved it back with his shoulder, almost losing his grip. He put the bolt back and dropped to the walkway.

‘We can open it whenever we want from inside,’ he said. He pointed out the headland opposite. ‘We’re south of Galata. Look at the current.’

Peter nodded.

‘Our galley can drop down on the tide – and pass within a stone’s throw of right here.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Nightfall or daybreak would be best.’

Peter rubbed his beard. ‘It would be all or nothing,’ he said. ‘If the galley misses the boat—’

‘The boat is swept away on the current never to be seen again.’ Swan grinned.

Peter shook his head. ‘I pity the poor bastards in the boat.’

‘Save your pity,’ Swan said. ‘You’ll be with them.’

That evening, they climbed the ladder up the well-shaft into what they believed to be Cardinal Bessarion’s Constantinople house. Despite his meticulous scouting, Swan’s heart beat like an armourer’s hammer smoothing metal as he climbed the ladder as far as it would go. Then he threw the rope with a grapnel. It went up, and then it came down, and nearly hit him on the head.

‘Damn,’ Swan said.

Peter nodded. ‘I’ll just climb down and wait for you to do this on your own,’ he said.

Swan waited for the archer to climb down. Then he tossed the grapnel as high as he dared, and covered his head.

Nothing happened.

Head still covered, he tugged the rope.

It seemed to have caught.

Suddenly his whole plan for climbing out of the well seemed very, very foolish.

He climbed the rope anyway. He tied a second rope to the ladder, hoping it would break his fall.

And then he was in. He could smell old incense, and there was enough light in the sky to see that he was in a kitchen, and that someone had opened the grain pithoi set into the floor.

Enough light to see the row of palettes where people slept. Kitchen slaves, perhaps.

And enough light to see the sword, held at eye height, pointed at his face.

On the positive side, it was a European sword, and the man behind it looked Greek.

It’s not always easy to take note of a man’s appearance when he’s looking at you over a sword, but the Greek was very handsome, with a small pointed beard and moustache, excellent skin and a strong chin. He was heavily muscled, like an athlete or a rower.

‘I’m from Cardinal Bessarion,’ Swan said.

The young man – he was no older than Swan – breathed out. ‘Christos Anesti,’ he said. ‘Christ is Risen.’ He looked at Swan. ‘We’ve been waiting.’

Swan lost a few hundred heartbeats when he saw how precariously his grapnel had grabbed the very edge of the well cover. He vowed never, ever to do such a foolish thing again.

Peter came up the rope.

The young man’s name was Apollinaris. He spoke perfect Italian. ‘I work for the cardinal,’ he said proudly.

‘Are you his steward?’ Swan asked.

‘I’m a philosopher,’ the young man said. ‘Sometimes an actor.’ He frowned. ‘Sometimes I steal secrets. And I’m an astrologer. And a hermeticist.’

Swan looked the young man over. ‘Are you alone here?’

‘No,’ Apollinaris said. ‘My whole troupe is here.’

‘Troupe?’ Swan felt as if he was missing something.

‘We’re mimes. We perform mimes, and ancient plays.’ Apollinaris shook his head. ‘You are a barbarian, I see.’

Peter’s head emerged from the well.

‘This is Peter – my . . . friend. Peter, this young man is Apollinaris. He says he is . . .’ Swan hesitated. ‘A philosopher. And the leader of a troupe of actors.’

‘Good Christ,’ Peter said.

‘I’m not the leader,’ Apollinaris said. ‘Nikephorus is the leader.’

‘I see,’ Swan said. The young man was on edge, and Swan had the oddest feeling that the young man was an escaped lunatic. He seemed to bounce slightly on the balls of his feet, as if overfilled with spirit.

Apollinaris leaned over the well. ‘Did you really come from the sewers? I always meant to explore them.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Am I right in assuming you need to get – er – out of Constantinople?’ he asked.

Apollinaris nodded. ‘Cardinal Bessarion sent a coded message and said he was sending someone to pick us up,’ he said. He sagged. ‘But that was months ago.’

Swan delivered a long string of obscenities. Peter arched an eyebrow.

‘Of course he didn’t tell us. What else could His Eminence do? What you don’t know, you can’t reveal.’ The Fleming sounded vaguely envious.

‘Books, he said. Relics. The head of Saint George.’ Swan all but spat. ‘A troupe of actors.’

‘You know about the head?’ asked the young man. ‘We have it.’

Swan crossed himself, something he very rarely did. ‘You . . . have it?’

‘Yes. We stole it. From the Turks.’ Apollinaris seemed very matter-of-fact about the whole thing.

He led them down a hall, and up a servant’s stair. At the top, he knocked softly at a pair of double doors. They opened.

Inside stood an enormous man with a cocked crossbow, a normally sized older man with another, and two women with the muscles of dancers, wearing men’s clothing, and with Turkish bows.

‘They’re from Cardinal Bessarion,’ Apollinaris said.

The room had pigeonholes in the walls, from floor to fifteen-foot ceilings, and every pigeonhole was filled with scrolls. Scrolls lay on the floor, and more were in baskets by the chairs.

In the middle of the room was a vast table, and in the centre of the table sat a reliquary slightly smaller than a man’s helmet. It looked to be made of solid gold, studded with pearls, enamel work and jewels.

Swan took it all in.

The crossbows didn’t waver. ‘Prove it,’ said the big man, in Greek.

‘How?’ Swan asked.

The man looked confused.

‘Look, I’ve come a long way. I thought I was coming for some books, but it appears I’ve been sent to get you lot. I have an escape plan, and all I need is a boat. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine.’ The whole time Swan was speaking he was looking at the reliquary.

It was . . . incredible.

First, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so much gold in one place at one time.

Secondly, the workmanship was . . . exquisite. Divine. Amazing.

Thirdly, it was covered – almost vulgarly so – in jewels. Swan wasn’t a jeweller, but he was pretty sure he was looking at diamonds. And rubies.

Large ones.

One of the dancers stepped between him and the reliquary. ‘We stole it,’ she said. ‘It’s ours.’

Peter fell on his knees.

So did Swan. He couldn’t help himself. He was twenty years old, and he’d been a devout Christian for every minute of the time – his mother had seen to that. He didn’t make a conscious decision to kneel. He just did.

Apollinaris grinned.

‘It really is the head of Saint George,’ he said.

‘May I . . . touch it?’ Swan asked, filled with the same vague piety that infected him when he was around Cardinal Bessarion.

The woman smiled. ‘Yes. I suppose.’ She stepped back. ‘How are you getting us out of here?’

‘How long have you been here?’ Swan asked.

‘Since the siege.’ Apollinaris shrugged. ‘Eventually we’d have abandoned the head and left the city. There’s no getting it out.’

‘The Turks know it is missing. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it.’ This from the older man.

Swan felt foolish, but something made him approach the object on his knees. He shuffled along until he reached the low table, and he opened the reliquary – it had a magnificent door, like the door to a miniature cathedral.

Inside was a brown skull. A cross had been inlaid into the smooth bone of the forehead. Otherwise, it was just a skull, and a very old one.

‘They say that whoever has the head of Saint George cannot be harmed by monsters or demons, by weapons, even by torture,’ said the prettier of the two dancers. She bowed. ‘I’m Irene.’

‘And I’m Andromache,’ said the other. ‘We are acrobats. And actors.’

Swan smiled and stood. ‘You’re the old woman at the gate.’

She smiled back. ‘And you are the Turk.’

The giant bowed. ‘Constantios, at your service,’ he said, stiffly.

The older man bowed as well. ‘Nikephorus,’ he said. He smiled bitterly. ‘Nikephorus Dukas.’

Swan tore his eyes from the relic. ‘Of the noble Dukas family?’ he asked.

‘One small branch, devoted to learning. We cannot all be busy ruining the empire.’ He shrugged as if his words were of no account. Then he pointed at the skull. ‘Familiarity will make you more comfortable with it,’ he said. ‘I confess we were silent for days after we . . . took it.’

‘It is like living with a gate into heaven,’ said Irene. She laughed – but softly, as if she was in church. ‘I am too much a sinner to be comfortable living with such a gate.’

Swan reached out and touched the skull.

Just for a moment, the world went white. Blank. Nothing – no noise, no sight.

He found he was on his knees again.

‘Oh my God,’ he said.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘Exactly.’

If the head was spectacular, the library was staggering.

‘This is all Bessarion’s?’ Swan asked, as he unrolled a scroll that seemed to have six plays in Greek all lined up together. He lacked the true connoisseur’s knowledge, but the scrolls seemed to be very old. The first play was entitled Taxiarchoi.

Taxiarchs were the archangels, in Greek.

‘Not all of it, by any means,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Some of it was mine. And some—’

Apollinaris laughed. ‘Most of it we stole. Or borrowed. I prefer to use the term rescued.’

Swan read a few lines. The main character was the god Dionysus, so that the play in question wasn’t about archangels at all.

After a moment, he guffawed.

In the scene he was reading, a weapons master was trying to teach the God of Wine to be a soldier. Swan had no idea how ancient the play might be, but just for a moment he had an odd, almost haunted feeling, as if the author of the play might be watching him. It was funny – deeply funny.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘That was mine. I collected all the plays I could find from the ancient world.’ He shook his head. ‘I used to fear that the Patriarch and his monks would find out, and I would be prosecuted.’

‘Who is this Eupolis?’ Swan asked.

Nikephorus bit his lip. Then he smiled. ‘I don’t really know,’ he admitted with a grandiloquent gesture.

Irene laughed and clapped her hands. ‘I’ve never heard you say that before, old man!’

Swan looked at another scroll. ‘And who was Heraklitus?’ he asked.

‘A philosopher,’ Nikephorus said. ‘I haven’t even read that one.’ He sighed. ‘The Suda – you know the Suda?’

Swan smiled. ‘Not at all, I fear.’

Nikephorus brightened. ‘While your ancestors were living in mud huts in Hyperborea, my dear young man, our monks were writing detailed encyclopedias of classical learning.’ He shook his head. ‘Classical learning comes and goes in fashion and tolerance,’ he said, somewhat peevishly. As if continuing his train of thought, he said, ‘I feared all the wrong things, and now my whole world is gone.’

‘Heraklitus was a philosopher like Aristotle? Like Plato?’ Swan asked.

‘Earlier, I think,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Not my field.’

Swan looked up at the scrolls. Hundreds of them. ‘Are any of these Aristotle?’ he asked.

‘All this,’ Irene said, smiling. Twenty scrolls sat in niches under a small marble bust. ‘This is an ancient statue of the man himself.’

Swan had that haunted feeling again. He took a scroll down.

An hour later, a dirty Christian beggar stopped a small Jewish beggar on the street.

‘I need to get a message to King David,’ the Christian said.

The boy nodded. ‘Sure, boss,’ he said, in Greek.

‘Just knock it in,’ Peter said.

Swan didn’t like waste. He prowled around the wellhead, because if they knocked it to pieces, it would be obvious to everyone how they’d escaped. And Swan liked to leave mystery behind him, when he could. It made for a better prank. A finer jest. And practically speaking, while he wasn’t sure who would be following him, he had a feeling . . .

On hands and knees, he found the deep crack that ran around the heavy marble block that held the cast bronze and stone wellhead. Under the dry-sink, he found a pair of holes in the marble, cut in at an angle.

Even better, leaning against the wall, he found two iron bars which fitted into the wellhead block.

It took four of them to lever it up. When they were done, they had an opening the size of a small cart, leading down into the darkness.

After dark, a wagon rolled up to the gate. Peter and Constantios watched it with bows drawn, while the two dancers covered the street and Swan went out the door into the courtyard.

Isaac slipped off the wagon box. ‘A boat?’ he asked. ‘It’s not even illegal to get a boat. You summoned me to get you a boat?’ He glared. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Simon means to sell me to the Turks,’ Swan said. ‘You?’

Isaac froze.

‘I find that sometimes this sort of talk saves time,’ Swan said. ‘There are more plots here than in the Bible. I want to make a straight deal. I will give you some very valuable items and some information, and you will provide me with this boat and take a single message to the Venetian quarter. And we’ll part friends, and be available to help each other another time. Simon won’t ever get to betray me, which he’ll live to be glad of. And I’ll survive to take your letters back to Venice.’

‘Why would I need you to carry my letters?’ Isaac asked.

‘I assume you plan to play the Venetian markets based on the Sultan’s invasion of the Morea.’ Swan shrugged. ‘I would.’

Isaac laughed. ‘Not bad. Why trust me?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘It saves time. And if everyone here is going to sell me, I’m dead. I have to trust someone.’

‘I agree.’ Isaac rubbed his beard. ‘I’m just not sure anyone has ever chosen me as the one to trust before.’ He laughed. ‘I like you, mad Englishman.’

Swan grinned. ‘Come back in two days. Everything you find in the house is yours.’ Swan handed over a note. ‘See to it this goes to Alessandro in the Venetian quarter. Like your packet – there’s nothing in it worth reading.’

Isaac smiled mirthlessly. ‘Balthazar said he liked you,’ he said. ‘So I will extend the courtesy of honesty. I can give you a day. Perhaps the two you want. Then I have to sell you, or I look . . . bad – to the Grand Turk.’

‘If you can make it two,’ Swan said, ‘I will count it an honest deal.’

Isaac bowed. ‘I will do my best.’

Swan took his hand, and they embraced briefly.

An hour later, the boat was floating, fully loaded, in the current.

Then they all climbed up one more time, swept the floors and the fireplaces, and the women went out and dumped the ash. Everything else went into the sewers until the house was clean. Then they levered the wellhead back into position and slid down the rope.

And then Irene climbed the wall like a spider and retrieved the rope.

‘What do we do with the ladder?’ Apollinaris asked.

Swan smiled. ‘Float it with us. Not far,’ he muttered.

Swan led them along the sewers, following his map. After the first arch – foundations, he assumed of the old city walls. Passing under the arch required very careful management of the boat and the floating ladder, but they got through, mostly dry. Swan counted the wells above them, and then stopped, cut loose the ladder, and raised it on to the walkway. He grinned at Peter and offered no explanation, and they were away again in moments.

The second time they had to pass under an arch, everyone had to swim, and Nikephorus, who couldn’t, had to hold on to the back of the boat. The older man was clearly terrified, and equally clearly in control of himself to a degree that caused him to rise high in Swan’s estimation.

Irene’s figure also caught Swan’s attention.

Cold, but triumphant, they passed east almost a mile, moving easily downstream. Once they had to get out on to the walkway, empty the boat, and carry everything around an obstruction where the street above had collapsed into the cavern, but there was water on the other side, and by late afternoon, Swan found them a campsite he’d scouted in the days before. ‘Don’t go anywhere!’ he insisted. ‘Tomorrow – at sunset. Out the water gate. I’ll meet you. If I can’t come, follow Peter.’

Peter came and stood with him. ‘Is this situation covered by my wages?’ he asked.

Swan considered the question. ‘No,’ he said.

Peter nodded. ‘Would you consider me off my head if I said I want a share?’

Swan considered this, too. ‘I’m still not quite sure how I make a ducat out of this,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t help but notice that you filled your quiver with the cardinal’s scrolls.’

‘I may be the only archer in the world with a quiver full of Aristotle, it’s true.’ Peter nodded.

‘You are a far better thief than I am,’ Swan said quietly.

‘Nonsense.’ Peter looked at the acrobats. ‘You stole the head of Saint George. I saw you.’

Swan considered denial. Then he shrugged.

Peter nodded. ‘So – I’m in for a share.’

‘So noted.’

‘What happened when you touched it?’ Peter asked.

‘Try yourself, and see. It’s real.’

Peter made a noise of derision. ‘The gold and jewels are real.’

Swan shrugged. ‘As you will. I’m off to the Venetian quarter. Don’t get lost.’

Peter nodded.

It was after dark when he dropped over the wall from the Pisan quarter into the Venetian. Shutters opened when he inadvertently overturned a handcart. He kept moving.

The inn in which the embassy were staying almost defeated him. With high walls and a gated entrance on the first level, surrounded by high buildings in the Venetian Gothic manner, it was an impenetrable fortress to a lone beggar.

He walked all the way around its block, heard voices, and found the stables – now empty. The stables didn’t have any windows, but as in buildings with ill-paid servants the world over, there was an obvious place to climb the wall. Swan was up and over and in the back yard, where once there had been a working fountain and horse troughs in a happier time.

A door was open at the back of the inn, and light seemed to flood out into the yard, brilliantly illuminating the man who stood there. He was talking to a woman who stood with her back to the light.

They blocked the door, and access.

Swan spent a weary half-hour listening to them flirt, and considering the irony – he’d crossed Constantinople undetected, and now couldn’t pass his own inn door because of a flirting couple.

‘You only want one thing, you dirty lecher,’ said the woman, with a laugh.

‘You want it too, my darling. My pomegranate,’ the man cooed.

‘My pomegranates aren’t all they were, either,’ she said. ‘Why do I even listen to your nonsense?’

‘Because the night is warm and you are beautiful—’

‘Does this work on other women, lout?’

‘There are no other women, divine one.’

She laughed. In Tom’s expert opinion, the whole thing was just a matter of time. He sat on his haunches in the shadow of the old horse yard.

‘Not here, lout!’

‘No one will come, Aphrodite.’

‘You are right that no one will come here – not me, and not you!’

‘I need you, navel of the world. Oh!’

He had her kirtle open – she had to have co-operated in that part, and Swan gave him full points, whoever he was. He was trying to get farther aboard her in the doorway. Swan cursed his hurry.

But she was of the same mind as Swan, and boxed the man’s ears.

As it turned out, her notion of privacy was the stable, which suited Swan. They made their way across the yard, one amorous exchange per step. For two people who seemed to him too old to care, they protracted the trip across the yard with more moans and caresses than he felt were possible.

But eventually, they vanished into the stables, and he ghosted across the inner yard, and in through the kitchen door.

The great inn kitchen was empty.

He stripped off his over-robe, threw it in the fire, climbed the steps with his bag on his shoulder and walked boldly to Alessandro’s room – he was now a Frank, exactly where he was supposed to be.

Alessandro was alone.

‘By the Virgin!’ he said, when Swan came in.

Swan grinned.

‘Alessandro,’ he said happily. ‘Listen, capitano. I have been to the cardinal’s house.’ He watched Alessandro’s face, but the Venetian gave nothing away.

‘Yes?’

‘I found a troupe of acrobats living there,’ he said.

Alessandro raised an eyebrow. ‘Eh?’ he said.

Either it was the finest performance Swan had ever seen, or Alessandro knew nothing.

‘They claim to be . . . spies – working for our cardinal.’ He shrugged. ‘They claim they have a message from the cardinal saying that someone would come and take them out of Constantinople.’

Alessandro nodded and stroked his short beard. ‘I see,’ he said slowly.

‘It occurred to me that they might be lying,’ Swan said.

Alessandro shrugged. ‘He has many . . . agents.’

‘So you weren’t told – perhaps when I was asleep – go and fetch the troupe of acrobats.’ Put that way, it sounded insane.

Alessandro rubbed his chin again. ‘The cardinal is most scrupulous at keeping all of us apart. Especially those he calls “day workers” from those he calls “night workers”.’

Swan nodded. ‘Did you get my note?’

Alessandro nodded. ‘I didn’t have to do anything. The bishop has already sent for the ship. Ser Marco will take us off from the quay at evensong tomorrow. Everyone is packed.’

Swan breathed a sigh. ‘Is the bishop ready? The word is he’s to be humiliated. That we will watch a procession of Christian slaves taken by Omar Reis, and see the Turkish army setting off to take the Morea.’

‘I know.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘Truly, I fear tomorrow. The bishop is a small man, and may behave . . . badly.’

‘Am I with you tomorrow? Or not?’

Alessandro scratched his ear. ‘I think I can use your wit.’