‘Put up!’ came a call. Swan turned, his dagger pressed hard against his man’s throat as a warning. The rondel dagger he carried for combat had a triangular cross-section and the three edges were not particularly sharp, but Swan knew they hurt.
He saw a halberd point emerging from the darkness of the entryway. Then another – men in armour – and behind them, Loredan.
‘Put up,’ he said. ‘In the name of the state and the Senate.’
The lagoon was unruffled, in a very faint breeze. It was early morning, and the Agnus Dei, a light galley, swept out of Venice under oars, scattering cormorants. She had a full complement of marines, noble archers and citizen oarsmen, and she carried Alessandro Bembo, Thomas Swan, William Kendal, Clemente and the tall, dark-skinned young man with brilliant eyes named Umar who was Bembo’s servant.
The water was so still that when the oars dipped and bit, they left little whirlpools on the surface that lingered in the ship’s wake.
‘Ragusa tomorrow,’ Alessandro said.
‘I’ll have to buy horses,’ Swan said, regretting his magnificent Arabs, currently enjoying a vacation of pasture and plentiful fodder on the Lido, but enjoying his new, slim, beautiful long sword. He was playing with it.
‘We’ll buy them in Dalmatia,’ Bembo said.
‘We?’ Swan asked. There had been hints, but nothing promised. Swan had spent a night in a cell. He was not in love with Venice. He’d missed dinner with Sophia. In fact, he’d been taken directly to the Agnus Dei, allowed only one stop with the Brescian swordsmith to replace his broken weapon.
‘We,’ Alessandro said. ‘I’ll be with you at least to Belgrade.’
Swan glanced at him. ‘Are you my keeper?’ he asked.
Bembo shrugged. ‘You made it Loredan’s business,’ he said. Then, with a smile, ‘He did lock me up, too.’ Bembo shrugged. ‘Of course, he let me out a day before he let you out.’
Swan was trying to enjoy the beauty of the morning.
‘I had dinner with him,’ Bembo said. ‘Just so we all knew we were still friends.’
Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I have to wrestle you for it?’ he asked.
‘I see this joke had grown too old,’ Alessandro said, producing a letter, carefully folded, and bearing a small seal in red wax.
Swan found the day more beautiful as he read Sophia’s letter.
Ragusa was almost as lovely as Venice. Swan had seen it pass on his left twice, going out to fight the Turks, but he’d never visited. The roofs were red, and the fortress was enormous, the walls thick enough to stop cannonballs – thicker than at Belgrade. And the position, on a narrow islet or a very elongated peninsula, looked impregnable, or near enough as not to matter.
Ragusa was no longer Venetian. The Lion of St Mark didn’t fly there; in fact the republic was allied with Ancona, the papacy and the Malatesta. But Swan had all the papers and passports, and for once it was Bembo who rode on his coat-tails. They were admitted graciously to the tiny, excellent inner harbour, and welcomed by the town’s podestà. They were hosted, too, given chambers in the fortress, and the next day they rode across the isthmus to the mainland on military horses sold to them at reasonable rates. Below them, as they climbed, they could see the galley rowing out to sea, like a great insect crawling rapidly on the water. The hills were rugged and mostly covered in trees, and the trees were turning from summer to autumn foliage in a riot of colour that reminded Swan of England.
‘We need to make contact with Skanderbeg,’ Bembo said, as soon as they were over the first hills. ‘This is his country, whatever Ragusa claims. And the Turks, of course.’
Swan had a letter in his saddlebag for George Castriot Scanderberg, as the Pope had addressed him. ‘What kind of a name is Skanderbeg?’ Swan asked.
‘False Latinate Ottoman drivel,’ Alessandro said. ‘The Turks fear him more than Hunyadi. He fought for them for years … I long to meet him. But they called him “Alexander lord”.’
‘Ah. Iskander Bey,’ Swan said, thinking in Turkish.
‘Now they call him “Alexander the Traitor”,’ Bembo said. ‘Some say he was Moslem before he changed sides.’
‘Jesus is great, and Muhammad is great, on them both be peace,’ said Swan, in Arabic. ‘That’s what the dervishes say.’
Bembo looked at him. ‘I think you have just surpassed me in cynicism,’ he said. ‘This worries me.’
Swan looked back at their men, toiling along behind on the endless uphill ride on a terrible road.
‘The Pope is destroying the economy of Italy to steal money from his allies and finance a crusade that no one believes in,’ Swan said very quietly. ‘I feel that there’s some room for extreme cynicism.’
Bembo negotiated a set of tree roots his horse didn’t like. ‘You may have a point,’ he said.
They covered a dozen miles the first day, and as much again the second. But there were no inns, and they needed food and guides to go any farther. Swan wasn’t sure, but worried that they were already off course. The roads were mere paths, and in two days they’d met one wandering Jew, one Serbian tinker and two very suspicious men on horseback with swords at their sides and bows in their hands.
But the god of fools, madmen, soldiers and intelligence gatherers sent them a small village on the third day, where an ageing Orthodox priest spoke excellent, if slow, Greek and was cautiously polite. Swan and Bembo and their party were offered hospitality and watched not as foes but as curiosities. Children gathered; young women waited on them as if they were famous; the headman dressed in his best before he came to join the priest at their table.
But fascination was preferable to suspicion. Swan told the priest in Greek that he had fought at Belgrade, and everyone wanted to hear about it. So Swan sat in a log house, the largest in the village, and told the story in the most general way.
Some of the local men glared at young Umar and spat when he passed. But that was the only hint of ill-treatment, and they slept well, their horses were fed, and in the morning the headman’s son Georgs offered to lead them to Skanderbeg, who was reported to be somewhere to the east, closer to Belgrade.
‘There is plague in the crusade army,’ the priest said. ‘Everyone is more afraid of plague than the Turks. Go with God, my sons.’
Georgs was a silent companion, as the only language they shared was church Greek. Swan had no Croat and Bembo’s Ragusan-Italian was met with a snort of derision.
‘Most of these villages are Catholic,’ Bembo said. ‘Or … not. This is not my area.’
Swan didn’t ask him what his area was.
‘Did I say I missed this?’ Bembo spat at midday. It was growing cold in the hills. ‘Sleeping on the ground, eating stale bread? I’m insane.’
In the afternoon, they met a dozen peasants cutting wood, and Georgs had a long conversation with them.
‘Go, eat, sleep,’ he said.
Swan agreed. They followed the woodcutters home to another village nestled in a high valley and ate lamb. Swan paid in silver and was kissed on both cheeks by an old man. They had no language in common, but the man traced the cross on his breast and bowed.
‘Patriarch says infidels in the hills,’ Georgs said. Patriarch was clearly a church word.
Swan tried to think of an appropriate Bible quote in Greek but his head was empty. He drew his sword a little, loosening it ostentatiously.
Georgs shook his head and mimed shooting an arrow and then struck himself on the back.
‘Oh, good,’ Bembo said. ‘Christ, I missed this. Take me home, Swan. I’m an old married man.’
That night they slept in the open without a fire, and took watches.
Swan and Bembo changed the watch some time after midnight, Swan retiring and Bembo waking up. It was cold, and Bembo grumbled again.
‘Look at the stars,’ Swan said. ‘They’re incredible.’
‘Night watch,’ Bembo said. ‘All that was needed to complete my reminder of my coloured past.’
‘I wonder sometimes why we
do it,’ Swan said.
‘Fighting for idiots who don’t love us?’ Bembo asked.
‘No, night watch. Who the hell could attack here, in the mountains, in the darkness?’ Swan shook his head. ‘I couldn’t walk fifty feet to piss.’
Bembo laughed. ‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the Turks can see in the dark?’
Swan stirred the fire. ‘Like hell they can. If you ask me, it’s all a game of fear. Everyone is afraid of the Turks. So we imagine them to have magic powers.’ He shrugged.
Bembo nodded in the enhanced firelight. ‘I agree. I have thought this many times. Defeat makes us afraid, and we begin to imagine the enemy bigger, stronger, far more dangerous.’ He sighed. ‘So I can go back to sleep?’ he asked.
They both laughed. ‘No,’ Swan said. ‘I can go to sleep, and you can philosophise.’
‘Maybe I’ll look at the stars,’ Alessandro said.
The next day, they found the Turks with almost no warning; a stream crossing in a narrow valley, a flash of sunlight on a horse’s flank, and Swan was drawing his sword and spurring forward.
They might have been Turks or Christian Albanians or even Greeks, but they meant business. Georgs got an arrow in his horse in the first moments, Clemente went down in the water, and Swan cut into a turbaned man and swept past, yearning for his harness. He was wearing a borrowed shirt of maille from the armoury in Venice; it was better than nothing, but it would not turn a Turkish arrow.
The second Turk had a big sword and knew how to use it. They manoeuvred around each other for some time, then Swan cut, parried, cut, and his fear spiked, as he waited for the sword in the face or the arrow in the back.
Instead, his own long blade cut into the other man’s fingers. Swan cut again, and hit more with the flat than the blade near the tip, knocking his man out of the saddle. The next man drew an arrow …
Swan’s out-thrust sword cut the bowstring …
… and then went in under his enemy’s armoured cap, rode along the eye ridge and penetrated, killing his foe instantly.
And then something hit Swan on his own head, and he was gone.
‘Don’t be dead, Thomas.’ Alessandro was leaning over his bed, calling to him. Violetta got up, wearing one of his shirts, and the Venetian laughed. ‘I caught you again,’ he said. ‘The cardinal says no women in the house. And your braes have shit stains.’
Swan swam up through the dream to the reality of his friend putting something cold and wet against his head. ‘Don’t be dead,’ Bembo said.
‘Uugnhhh,’ Swan said.
He went down again.
He was very sorry he woke at all the next time, and it took him some moments of pure misery before he realised that he was head down over a horse on a steep trail, and his bladder was full. Mercifully, he went down again.
He surfaced to find Kendal leaning over him, and a babble of women’s voices in the background. He was in a Turkish tent … for a moment he was in the Sultan’s pavilion. His heart flooded with fear.
Kendal had his dagger in his belt. Even in his current state, that meant they were not prisoners.
Swan steadied himself. He felt …
Like a man with a dent in his head.
‘Ah, hello there!’ Kendal said. He looked away, then said, ‘Eyes open!’
Clemente appeared, and then Umar with a bandage around his head, and then Bembo.
‘You are with us, English?’ Bembo asked.
‘Mmm,’ Swan said. ‘Yes,’ he added in English, and then in Turkish. And only later in Italian.
They all laughed, even Umar.
‘Good to have you back,’ Alessandro said.
‘Where am I?’ Swan asked.
‘In the pavilion next to that of the renowned Iskander Bey,’ Bembo said. ‘I need your Greek. And your other skills. For now, we’re in the middle of someone else’s harem.’ Bembo laughed. ‘Which is perhaps ironic.’
Swan managed a smile. ‘How … bad … am I?’ he asked.
Bembo vanished. It hurt for Swan to turn his head. Then he reappeared.
He held out Swan’s little steel cap.
‘Ouch,’ Swan said. There was a crease a finger deep across the whole top.
‘Messire Bembo dropped the bastard,’ Kendal said in English.
‘Ouch,’ Swan said again, and closed his eyes.
‘If you will go charging people,’ Bembo said, in mock, or perhaps genuine, disapproval.
The next day, Swan was better, although sitting up made him dizzy. Bembo was fretting with impatience, but Swan was helpless and could not rise. A young boy came and read him the Bible in Greek, which seemed odd but passed the time.
The next day, another boy came and read to him in Latin.
But the third day he rose and managed to dress, although the world still spun from time to time and everything made him tired. As soon as he was decent, Clemente fetched Bembo, and Bembo took his arm and walked him out on to the field of autumn flowers on which they were camped and then across a sort of courtyard to a great red pavilion.
‘Skanderbeg has been asking for you,’ he said. ‘I have spoken to him twice through interpreters. He says he will not take his army any closer to Belgrade, because there is plague. He says Vlachia has fallen to a new ruler, and the Turks are gone across the mountains, except for a handful of bandits.’
‘Like the one who dropped me,’ Swan said.
‘Actually,’ Bembo said, ‘they were fleeing from the Albanians, trying to get home. Kendal and I took two prisoners. Apparently they will be exchanged.’ There were guards outside the pavilion, uniformed, very much like the Sultan’s voynuks, with halberds.
An usher came and led them to the great man, who sat on cushions. He wasn’t as tall as Swan had imagined him, and he had no dais. He was thin, almost wiry, despite loose Turkish clothing. He had a full beard and a short red hat, almost identical to Francesco Sforza’s hat.
Swan bowed, and almost fell over.
Skanderbeg rose and took his hand.
Swan made a short oration in Latin, about cooperation with the Pope, and handed over his letter for the Albanian chieftain. Skanderbeg, for his part, smiled to see the seals, and kissed the letter, and commented that Swan looked like a fighter to one of his nobles, in Greek.
A priest, a Catholic, rose and thanked Swan in very flattering terms, offered the Albanian’s undying gratitude, and promised every service. Outside, in counterpoint, a man began to scream. The screams were terrible, starting low and moving to a range usually associated with women in childbirth.
‘Ah,’ Skanderbeg said. ‘One of your prisoners, Lord Bembo.’
Bembo’s look of rigid indifference was masterful. ‘Ah, hmm,’ he said.
‘I thought him more usefully displayed as a lesson,’ Skanderbeg said. He looked at Swan. ‘Don’t you agree?’
‘Agree?’ Swan asked.
The man screamed again.
‘It is often good for young warriors to see a man tortured to death,’ Skanderbeg said. ‘To see an enemy humiliated until his manhood is gone.’ The Albanian’s eyes narrowed. ‘Belgrade had brought me a great many recruits, not all of them reliable.’
Swan opened his mouth and Alessandro kneed him in the back of his own knee and made him stumble.
‘The English knight is still not recovered from his wound,’ Bembo said.
Swan sank to one knee in agreement.
It was another day before Swan could even consider mounting a horse, but Skanderbeg was getting ready to move south and east. He was determined to mop up the local Turkish-backed tribes while he could.
He came to visit Swan with no warning on the morning of Swan’s third day of consciousness. The dizziness was better, and Swan was writing a letter.
‘Company!’ sang out Kendal from outside. And then, ‘Holy Mary mother of God, it’s the bandit-king hisself,’ in English.
Swan had time to throw a surcoat over his doublet and turn his letter over, and then Clemente was opening th
e tent’s interior walls and Skanderbeg came in.
He was alone, which was remarkable. Great men like Skanderbeg moved with packs of followers. They were never alone.
‘Sit, sit,’ he said, and seized a camp stool for himself. ‘There is a rumour that Hunyadi is dead.’
Swan felt as if an electric shock had gone through him. ‘What?’ he asked in Latin. Impolitic and inelegant, but he was shocked.
Skanderbeg shrugged. ‘I’ve heard that Hunyadi is dead ten times – twenty – since we started fighting the Turks. And Mehmet, may his name be cursed; everyone said he was killed at Belgrade, but then a week later, he was alive.’ Skanderbeg slapped his long red boot in amusement. ‘I hear that nasty wound in his thigh was made by you, Englishman. I hear this from a Turkish officer who remains my friend.’
Swan shrugged. ‘I fought him,’ he said. ‘I thought I hit him. I got his turban.’ He smiled. I’m bragging to a man who tortures men to educate his soldiers, he thought.
‘If I had stabbed the Sultan, I wouldn’t ever come back to Romania,’ Skanderbeg said. ‘You must be very brave.’
Swan shrugged.
‘I need money,’ Skanderbeg said. ‘I will take my household troops, my own lads, south against Varlim Bey, the dog. But if I had money, I could pay good soldiers, not just bandits like my mongrels. Eh?’
Swan nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘You have money for Hunyadi,’ Skanderbeg said. ‘You must … that’s how the Pope of the West works. He never sends soldiers, only money. You are his man – everyone says so. Eh?’
Swan smiled. ‘I serve Cardinal Bessarion …’ he said evasively.
Skanderbeg passed a hand through the air as if it were a sword lopping off a head. ‘Bah. I only say to you … if you come to Belgrade and find Hunyadi dead and the plague rampaging … I could kill a great many Turks with a few thousand ducats.’ He looked cautiously at Swan. ‘And tell your Venetian friend that I could make a bargain with the Lion, too. Now is not the time for us to fight among ourselves.’
Swan bit his lip. ‘Perhaps, if Hunyadi’s army is not moving … I would find you again,’ he said. ‘I can promise no support from the Pope.’
‘Your letter promises me his support!’ Skanderbeg said. He shrugged and rose. ‘I thought maybe you were a fighter who could do things, not a talker.’ He raised an eyebrow.
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