Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome (2 page)

The
Nike
’s timoneer looked over his shoulder at his captain, but there was no order to increase speed. The
capitano
was smiling, not with insane ferocity, but with a calm that made Swan want to leap on the command deck and ask
what is it you know?

The tempo of the Turkish strokes increased in a magnificent crescendo, and all three ships closed to javelin range.

Now all the ships’ marines and archers were exchanging shafts as quickly as they could draw and loose. The Turkish professionals returned three shafts for one on their prey. The Venetians were brave and had better armour, and their plate cuirasses and heavy helmets kept them in the fight, because the Turks lacked nothing in volume, power or speed. One by one the Venetian archers were shot down – Antonio took an arrow in the right arm, Giovanni took one in the nose, and finally Peter was alone, his hands and arms almost blurred with the speed of his loosing. He was using his own heavy shafts now.

An arrow took Swan in the helmet, and the diamond-shaped head cut right through the good Milanese steel and hung there – but didn’t go through the padding beneath. Another hit him in the breastplate, and then a third, and both punched through the plate like an awl through heavy leather, but couldn’t penetrate the mail and leather underneath.

Swan’s Turkish bow was right there. He shook the gauntlet off his right hand, took a shaft from the Spaniard’s quiver and loosed it almost unaimed into the vast maw of the Turkish galley ranging alongside, just three oars’ lengths away and trying to draw even. He saw Omar Reis amidships and his next shaft went with intent. One of the janissaries saw him aim and the return volley from the Turkish ship caught him repeatedly. He was hit so many times he was knocked down. His head collided with the deck hard, and the shaft in his helmet splintered and wrenched his neck, and for a moment he thought he was badly hurt.

He bounced to his feet with another shaft in his hand and had to pause to break off the arrows in his breastplate, which stuck out like pins in a lady’s pincushion.

The
capitano
roared, ‘Ramming speed! Everything, now, by the grace of God!’

The timoneer’s staff began to thump the deck in a frenzy.

Only two of the Turkish ships were ranging alongside. The third had lost her stroke – a real danger at high speeds, with arrows coming aboard, oarsmen dying or wounded, and the sounds of many sets of drums.

Peter had an arrow in his thigh and another in his hat, and yet he rose from the cover of the high bulkhead and loosed down into the knot of archers in the nearest ship’s waist.

Swan rose and loosed – not at the enemy archers, but at the helmsman and the timoneer on the nearest deck..

‘Good boy,’ Peter said. It sounded like
Gut buoy.

Peter rose and loosed.

Swan rose …

The Turkish vessels were suddenly almost a ship’s length behind. He loosed, almost at random.

Peter rose, paused, and allowed himself to slump to the deck. He let the tension off his bow and dropped the arrow to the deck. ‘Oarsmen tiring,’ he panted. ‘Theirs, not ours!’

‘We have them, my beauties!’ shouted Ser Marco. ‘Everything you have, for by the Virgin, we have them.’

The Turks fell behind at an astonishing rate. In ten minutes, the captain ordered all rowing halted and had the sail up – in the time it would take for a good priest to say a mass, they were virtually alone racing down the Dardanelles.

They laughed, and some men cried, and Swan looked down and began to push the spent arrows out of the ruin of his once beautiful breastplate. Such was the spirit of battle and the joy of survival that he had four of them out of his cuirass before he realised that the sixth wasn’t in his fauld. It was below his fauld.

He’d never felt the arrow. But when he saw it, he saw the blood, and suddenly the pain of it hit him.

He sat abruptly.

Peter gave him a long look, and shook his head. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said. ‘That’s a bad one.’

Swan opened his eyes. He was on a bed – a very comfortable bed – and the sun poured in on him from a pair of arched windows at the end of the bay. The walls were white, and the sheets were white linen.

In a single breath, it all came back to him – the ship fight, the water gate, the cisterns and sewers, Khatun Bengül. Omar Reis.

He looked down, and moved his leg, and it was still there.

A middle-aged man with ginger hair shot with grey, a short, pointed beard and a black skullcap came down the line of beds. He had a set of wax tablets in his hand and wore long brown robes. He paused at the only other occupied bed, leaned far over, so that his black-capped head vanished from view – and Swan heard a murmur.

When he rose from the bedside, Swan saw the eight-pointed star on his breast. He looked at Swan, met his eye and smiled.

‘Master Claudio!’ he called softly. ‘Your patient is awake.’

He’s a knight of St John. A Hospitaller. Where the hell am I?

Master Claudio emerged from the arched door at the far end of the bay with a tall clay bottle and a cup on a tray. His gown had wide sleeves, and as he moved they seemed to flap, enhancing the impression he gave of a small and angry bird of prey.

‘Look at you!’ Claudio said. His acerbic tone could not mask his obvious joy. ‘I think you are going to live, and by the Virgin, messire, I intend to exhibit you in every classroom in Padua. I will be the most famous doctor in Europe!’

‘Really?’ Swan felt good – tired, but good. He didn’t feel as if death had brushed him.

‘You took an arrow in the groin. Don’t worry – your penis is intact, as are your testicles. The arrow was three fingers higher. You ought to be dead. But by St Martin – I got it out without touching the artery, and you must have Lucifer’s very own luck, because you should have died screaming of infection five days ago. Or died silently in a massive fever, burning as if the sun god himself wanted to take you.’

The Knight Hospitaller came over. Swan couldn’t help but notice that the man was wearing full-length boots under his long scholar’s gown. He had blood under his nails.

‘He really is going to live,’ the knight said in northern Italian. ‘You owe some thanks to God, young man. If this is not a miracle, it comes very close to one.’ The knight inclined his head. ‘Turkish arrows are often poisoned, as well.’ He pointed at the wound in the younger man’s groin.

Swan looked down at his wound and got the choking feeling he associated with injury – his breathing grew instantly shallower, and his vision began to tunnel. He could taste salt.

The Hospitaller held a basin for him. ‘It’s healing,
mon brave
,’ he said, his voice kind.

Swan’s hands were shaking. He looked away, and then the gravity of his wound really hit him. ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly. ‘Apologies, Sir Knight.’

‘You may call me brother. I am Fra Domenico Angelo.’ He bowed. ‘I gather you are the young man who has saved the head of St George.’ He put his hand on Swan’s head. Swan felt the ring on his scalp. ‘The blessings of our Lord and Saviour be upon you and remain with you. Amen.’

He walked back along the ward, spurs ringing faintly against the floorboards, while Swan contemplated the magnificent diamond he’d just glimpsed on the knight’s hand.

A jewel like that cried out to be taken.

‘Where are we, Master Claudio?’ Swan asked.

‘Monemvasia, in the Morea,’ Claudio said. ‘We had twenty men wounded, and we needed a hospital or all of you were going to die.’ He pointed down the ward at the other beds. ‘The other men are Genoese. They had a little Turkish problem, too.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Our galleys are lying together in the port, and we are not good bedfellows, eh?’

Swan tried to sit up, and discovered his wound was still capable of inflicting horrifying levels of pain. ‘Sweet Jesu!’ he moaned.

Claudio nodded and poured a clay cup full of medicine. ‘Just so. Drink this.’ He smiled, looking more than ever like an angry sparrowhawk.

‘Not bad,’ Swan said as he finished his tot.

‘Opium,’ Claudio said. ‘Everyone likes it.’

Swan was two weeks in Monemvasia, and during those two weeks, the Sultan’s armies swept through Greece, taking three of the great Frankish castles.

Swan heard it all from the serving brothers. The Hospitaller brothers were, most of them, former mercenaries who had learned the rudiments of nursing in the service of the order. The eldest, Sam Totten, was English.

‘We’ll have this ward full of men in no time, mark my word,’ he said. ‘Fucking Greeks. Useless sods if you ask me. More interested in fighting among themselves than fighting the Turks.’

‘Unlike the well-unified Italians, you mean,’ Swan said. He was playing piquet with the older man. He looked at his cards again, shook his head in weary resignation, and said, ‘I have a few friends who are
stradiotes
. I think they’d tell you that the empire was worse than the Turks. And they might debate the point about being bad soldiers.’

‘Oh, by St George, young master, their
soldiers
is good enough – hard as nails. It’s their fucking-pardon-my-expression noblemen and churchmen. They fought among themselves until the Turks ate them. And now they’ll take this place and Mistra and then – pfft. All gone. By your leave. Sixty-eight points.’ He showed his cards.

Swan shook his head. ‘Thirty-one points, so I’m doubled. I hate this game.’

The older man stood up. ‘This place could hold a long time, but it will need an ally. Venice – the Pope, mayhap.’

Swan sat up carefully, using his elbows and not his stomach muscles. ‘I thought this place belonged to Venice.’

The monk shook his head and sat back on his stool. ‘The Despot took it from the Prince of Achaia – oh, years ago. Before ever I came out to Hellas. Agincourt year, or even before. Now, if the local men are lucky, Venice will take it back.’ He looked up. ‘See what I mean? The Despot spent his treasure taking this place, instead of fighting the Turks.’

They heard booted footsteps and spurs, and the older serving brother leaped to his feet and cleared the tray with the cards. He dumped it into a sack and put the sack smoothly under Swan’s mattress. He seemed very practised at this movement.

‘Lucky for all of us that Fra Diablo wears spurs, even in the hospital,’ the monk added. ‘Like a bell on a cat.’

‘Fra Diablo?’ asked Swan.

The older Englishman winked. ‘Can I get you aught else, Master Swan?’

‘A really beautiful girl who will do all the work?’ Swan asked wistfully.

Totten didn’t even laugh. He wrinkled his brow and walked off as the knight strode on to the ward with Di Brachio in tow.

‘Our prize patient,’ said the knight. ‘Touched by God. Messire Swan, this gentleman has come to see you. I hope he is an agreeable visitor, as I have a small item of business to discuss with the two of you.’

Swan saw the ring, collet turned in to hide the stone. Even as he glanced at it, he noticed the knight twirl it with his thumb, and the stone shone for a moment and then vanished again.

That thing is very, very big.

Di Brachio took Swan’s hand and pressed it. ‘I want you to know that when I was told you were going to die, I was, perhaps, going to shed a tear.’ He leaned over and kissed Swan on both cheeks. ‘But as you plan to live, I suppose you’ll eventually replace my boots.’

Swan laughed, and his gut hurt.

‘How is everyone?’ he asked.

‘Di Brescia got through without a touch. Giannis got an ugly wound – an arrow that ran right up his left arm under the skin. Looks terrible, but seems not to trouble him much. Only one man died – Giovanni, the archer.’ He grinned. ‘The pretty actress asks for you every day. Don’t get your hopes up – I think she’s changed horses for Giannis.’ He shrugged. ‘Peter is in another ward – he took three hits and he’s slower to recover than you.’

‘Sweet Christ,’ Swan said.

Di Brachio nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a shot stour like it.’ He shook his head. ‘Arrows fell like snow.’ He sighed. ‘And you, scapegrace? Are you planning to live to make more trouble for me?’

Swan met his eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Di Brachio shook his head. ‘Don’t be. This one isn’t on your head, my friend. Or rather, it is on the head, not on you. The head of St George. The news that we have it is everywhere – the oarsmen blabbed. Right now, the head is in the Hospitaller chapel, and even the Greeks are coming to venerate it – there’s a line outside. The Sultan has ordered us taken. There’s an army coming under Omar Reis to lay siege to this place.’

Fra Domenico waited patiently, his hands folded inside his robe.

Di Brachio got off the bed and smoothed the counterpane with his hand. ‘My apologies, Sir Knight. You wanted to speak to us?’

‘I expect the army was coming here anyway,’ the knight said. ‘The Sultan didn’t plan to let this town stand. He intends to take all the Morea. And then the Balkans. And then Italy.’

‘Italy?’ the two men said together.

‘He intends to conquer the world, like his hero, Alexander,’ Fra Domenico said. ‘It is along these lines I wished to speak to you two worthy gentlemen in private. I do not command this town. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that I am allowed to maintain a Latin chapel and a hospital within the walls.’

Di Brachio smiled mirthlessly. ‘Messire is too modest.’

Fra Domenico raised his eyebrows.

Di Brachio shrugged. ‘Are you not the captain known as Fra Diablo? The most notorious pirate in the Aegean? Hero of Genoa, the curse of Venice?’

Fra Domenico sighed. He tugged his beard, and for a moment he was a frightening figure – Swan saw him unhooded, so to speak, and then he veiled his eyes and shook his head. ‘I do not answer to that name, and I attack only enemies of the faith. Venice makes up names for me because I am not their friend when they ally themselves with enemies of the faith.’ He all but spat. ‘And you, of course, are of the Bembii, are you not?’

Di Brachio spread his arms. ‘Alas, I am, although depending on how the wind blows across St Mark’s Square, my father may have disowned me.’

The knight sat on the next bed and sighed. ‘Venice and Genoa – our infighting was the death of Constantinople.’