Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six: Chios (4 page)

He cringed at the image of a tortured death.

‘I have the ring,’ he said.

Drappierro shocked him. ‘Then I’ll send you for it, of course,’ the Genoese ambassador said. ‘And that surprises you. Really, my boy, you must school your face better than that.’ Drappierro stood up. ‘Be back in four days, or I’ll kill Zambale. If you aren’t back in a week I’ll send word to have your so-called wife murdered. It won’t be pretty, even if she is a whore who opens and shuts to order – understand me, Master Swan? You have palpable hostages to fortune and I can strike at them all. Even your friends in Rome. Messire Di Brachio is recovering – did you know that? Are you two lovers?’

Swan was shaking.

Drappierro lowered his voice. ‘Really, Master Swan. Do not be a fool. If you return with the ring, I can arrange your escape. From Auntie and from Omar Reis. Neither cares so very much, eh? Bring me the ring, and I will be your friend. Need I say more?’

Swan took a steadying breath and wished he were Zambale. ‘I need more than four days,’ he said. ‘The knights won’t let me go so easily.’

‘Oh, but they will. I thought you were so intelligent,’ Drappierro said lazily. ‘And by the way, you have just betrayed that the other boy’s life matters to you.’ He made a head motion, barely distinguishable. ‘Very well. Seven days. And then I send for both of them to die.’

Swan couldn’t help himself. ‘I could leave Zambale to die and beat your messenger to my wife,’ he said.

Drappierro nodded. ‘You could,’ he said. He smiled with a smugness that was impossible not to hate. ‘But you won’t.’

Utterly in charge of the situation and everything around him, Messire Drappierro rose, and gave Swan a civil bow. ‘I’ll see you in a week, then,’ he said. He walked out through the open oak doors. He looked back and paused. ‘I own … a great deal of Mytilini. And most of the people in it. Don’t imagine you can deceive me. I’ll be watching through other eyes. Eyes that, if you stand with me, you can help me to command.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t want you to make a mistake and try to resist because you hate me, Master Swan. That wastes my time and your life.’ He nodded. ‘Get the ring. Nothing else matters.’

Swan let out a breath and realised he’d been holding it a long time. Drappiero’s footsteps rang on the stone, and then the man was gone.

Swan didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone so much in his entire life.

Moments later, armoured men came and unlocked his cell. ‘You are free to go,’ one said in Burgundian French.

Swan received his sword and his purse – empty – and was escorted to the port, where the same fishing boat was waiting, surrounded by soldiers.

They sailed out unmolested, in a way that suggested that every Turkish ship knew exactly who they were.

Giorgios, the fisherman, spat angrily over the side. ‘Maybe death would have been better,’ he said. ‘I have smuggled on these coasts for twenty years, and now every man in Chios and all the Turks have me marked.’

Swan was trying to feel free and breathe easily, but he watched every glance from the fishermen and wondered which one of them was in Drappierro’s pay.

It took them less than a day to sail back to Kalloni, and Swan lost precious hours dickering with a Kalloni bureaucrat for the loan of a horse. He signed a document he didn’t read, in the name of the Sovereign Order, used the Lord of Eressos’s name as often as he dared, and finally rode a small horse – but a good one – up over the ridges towards Mytilini. He alternated canters and walks, and every hour he walked beside the horse.

He lost the road with Mount Olympos visible against the moon and stars, and wound up in a deep valley with a Roman aqueduct. He spent half the night sorting out this error and reached the road by a farm track just after dawn. He was exhausted and angry, and he crested the great ridge above Mytilini only to find two bearded men with halberds blocking his way.

‘All your money, and the horse and the boots, my lord,’ said the nearer man. He grinned.

His brother – the resemblance was plain – grinned too.

A twitch in the gloom, and Swan saw a third man with a heavy crossbow, fully spanned.

Swan had no idea how well trained his horse was, but he knew they’d kill him either way.

He leaned forward, put his right spur firmly against his horse’s right side, and got his right hand on his sword hilt – and drew. The sword went straight forward as the horse turned, and his cut took the older brother’s eyes and cut through the bridge of his nose.

The man screamed and fell forward, and Swan wasn’t there as the crossbow bolt ripped through the air. The horse turned with its back feet, pivoting on its forefeet, and Swan was almost under the saddle he was bent so low. As the second man came in reach, Swan began to rise in the stirrups, and he cut at the pole arm’s haft – three strong cuts, one, two, three – to keep the man off him, and then his horse was galloping down the road, throwing sparks in the early morning gloom.

Swan looked back once, to see the two surviving bandits crouched over the blinded man.

He stopped to clean his sword and found the blade bent from his heavy hacking at the pole arm haft – worse, there was a deep chip in the blade where he’d cut into the iron on the haft.

He cursed. He had loved that sword. Showy as it was, he’d bought it with Violetta.

He rode into Mytilini after Latin matins, and found the knights of the order in church. He knelt and prayed, and followed Fra Tommaso out into the sunlight.

‘You smell a treat,’ Tommaso said. He embraced the younger man. ‘You survived.’

Swan looked away. When he looked back, all of his choices were made, and his plans laid. ‘Very well. Sirs, I am a spy for Bessarion. I will tell you everything. The men of Chios are in the process of selling the town to the Turks. I was sent —’ He paused and looked at Fra Domenico. ‘I was sent to get your ring, which the traitor Drappierro wants. If I do not get it – he kills Zambale and …’ Swan looked at the two knights. ‘And my wife. So he claims. As far as I can see, he’s running both sides of the negotiations at Chios, and the Turks dance to his tune.’ He shrugged. ‘He wants me to abandon Bessarion and work for him.’

Domenico smiled at Tommaso, who frowned. Domenico stripped the ring off his finger and put it in Swan’s hand. ‘Take it, then. Go buy the young lord’s freedom. He is, as I understand it, a volunteer of my order.’ The man that all Christians called ‘Fra Diablo’ gave a laugh that would have chilled a murderer. ‘Listen, Master Swan – never let a material object own you. I won it at cards. Take it.’ He smiled. ‘And think – when you have a chance – of the difference between men like us and Drappierro.’

Swan all but fell on his face. ‘You mean it?’ he asked.

Domenico laughed. ‘Now – can you fight? Your return will fill a very useful place.’ He gave the Englishman a hard smile. ‘I will choose to trust you. If you fail us – God’s curse on you.’

Sunset.

Swan was beyond exhaustion – a little light headed, his hands shaking. He wore the red coat with a white cross of a full knight of the order, and he stood on the command deck of the
Katherine Sturmy
, which towered over the other ships pulling off the beach as a castle towers over a host of infantry.

He’d had a busy day. Out into the town, meeting the silversmith and the wine seller, up to the palace to find a sword, three meetings with the captains to plan Fra Domenico’s mad attack …

And no visit with Theodora.
He’d smelled her perfume while he chatted with Prince Dorino.

In the end, Dorino had offered all the help he could have dreamt of, including the fine German long sword that hung heavily at his side.

The prince had smiled. ‘It’s not what you came for,’ he said. ‘But unlike my fair cousin, it may save your life.’

Swan smiled as he thought of Prince Dorino.

All five galleys were forming inside the breakwater, and there was nothing that the Turks could do without risking the fire of the great castle. But they were forming halfway across the strait, a dozen black hulls in the failing light.

Richard Sturmy was also wearing the habit of the order, and he had good armour – half-armour – which shone as red as his coat in the red sunset.

‘I feel like a great man,’ the Englishman admitted. ‘Always wanted to be a knight. Whew! Look at me. Katherine – I wish she could see me!’

Goodwife Sturmy and her daughter were safe in the castle. The great merchant ship with her high sides and bluff bows for fighting the northern Atlantic had unloaded most of her remaining cargo of lead and all her new alum and was now mounting a pair of Prince Dorino’s cannon, and her waist was full of his mercenaries. The fighting tower forward was fully mounted, and from it floated the banner of the order.

A dozen knights appeared to grace her decks.

Indeed, every one of the galleys appeared to be
full
of knights, their red and white glowing in the red sun. One of the tallest knights was Peter the Dutchman, bow laid aside on the deck and wearing German half-armour from the Mytilini armoury. Few men so looked the part, and he rested on a poleaxe as tall as he was as if to the manor born.

‘You take a great risk,’ Swan said.

Sturmy shrugged, and Master Shipman grunted an order to an English sailor at the helm, and the man steered small and watched for the opening in the breakwater – orders were shouted from the forecastle, because with fighting castles mounted, it was very difficult for the helmsman to see forward, even leaning well out.

Sturmy watched it all and grinned. ‘If this works, I’ll be away in the morning and scot free all the way to Venice. It this fails …’ He shrugged. ‘By Saint George, Master Swan, I don’t think there’s a ship in these waters that can do my
Katherine
a hurt. Perhap with cannon – infernal engines. But only if they take me by surprise or there’s no wind.’

‘Flagship says to proceed to sea,’ called Shipman’s son Nicholas. ‘Red flag,’ he allowed, as if his father might doubt him.

‘Very well,’ Shipman allowed. He nodded. ‘Let go, forward there.’

The mainsail was let go and sheeted home very quickly, and the tub-like
Katherine Sturmy
began to gather way very slowly. Behind her vast bulk, five galleys crawled into a neat formation and then rested their oarsmen.

The Turks formed a neat crescent to receive them. Swan could already see the ghazis and the marines forming in the bows, and the glow of matches.

Fra Domenico had said it –
For the first minutes, the
Sturmy
will be alone against all their ships.

The sun had not quite left the sky when the Turkish ships leapt to ramming speed. The
Sturmy
was under full sail, her round hull ploughing the water at a third of the speed of one of the order’s galleys or one of the charging Turks – a speed that was pitifully slow. Swan regretted allowing Sturmy to risk his ship, which was going to be hulled by half a dozen rams, anyway.

And behind them, the order’s galleys huddled in the broad wake of the big English merchant as if they were terrified of the Turkish onslaught.

Swan put a hand on the German sword at his waist and felt its hilt, which he already loved. It was light and responsive – heavy on the hip, but light in the hand. He had on all his armour. His leg harnesses were killing him – all he could imagine was that his legs had grown again.

Amidships, the Burgundian gun crews stood over their low gonnes – which the crew had christened ‘right pig’ and ‘left pig’ because they did look a little like feeding pigs. Slow match burned, as it did aboard the Turkish ships, and every sailor who could be spared had his English longbow to hand. Peter had his on the deck beside him, despite his armour and assumed air of knightly prowess.

Swan was playing the role of ship commander. In fact, he never gave an order – it was Sturmy’s ship, and Shipman was clearly the true captain, and the two men worked together with the ease of long and sometimes bitter familiarity.

Neither seemed concerned about the encounter.

The lead Turks came on. They had now formed into two lines. The lead line was going to ram the English round ship, and the following line was going to pass to the north and south of the wreck and attack the order’s galleys.

Just as Fra Domenico had predicted.

Swan glanced at the ring on his finger. It sparkled like Fra Diablo’s eyes as he gave the orders.

When Swan thought about the ring, his roguish notions of cleverness were largely rendered squalid by the excellence of Domenico’s gesture.

And he thought –
Well, if I go to the bottom, so does the ring. Take that, Drappierro.
But at another level, he had to ask –
Why did he just give it to me? Eight thousand ducats?

As always seemed to happen in a sea fight, time began to compact. One moment, he had all the time in the world to empty his bladder and check the hang of his sword, to try to adjust the fit of his left leg-armour, because the greave was grinding into his instep somehow – and the next, the Turks were ten ship lengths away, at full racing speed, the grunts of their rowers audible over the darkening sea.

Swan drew his sword.

Sturmy put a hand on his arm. ‘You might put it away,’ he said with a smile. ‘Yon heathen will never make it near my deck.’

Swan nodded sheepishly and sheathed his sword.

He spent the last minute going forward to stand with the other ‘knights’ in the forecastle.

Peter grunted at him. He pointed at the Turks, close enough to touch.

‘Fucking Idiots,’ he said.

The first Turk struck them, his narrow profile almost lost behind the high bows of the English ship. But his ram, mounted above the waterline, struck the English ship like a hammer.

Against an anvil.

The Turkish ship was at full speed, and she struck hard enough to kill the
Katherine Sturmy
’s way for a heartbeat, but the masts held.

The Turkish ship
bounced.

It bounced so hard that its mainmast came down, slewing the whole galley – the bow came round sharply, exposing the long fragile broadside to the impact of the
Sturmy
’s forefoot, and she ground the Turkish galley under her like a great lady treading on a snake. The Turk rolled, took on water, and was broken in half – all in three heartbeats – and every one of her two hundred Christian slaves died in ten more.