The Tournament

by Matthew Reilly

  Mr Ascham and I stood with straight backs as though we were soldiers on parade. Mr Giles and Elsie emerged from their rooms, startled.

  The Sultan spoke simply and directly.

  ‘There has been a murder in my palace. The visiting Cardinal Farnese. His body has been desecrated. The palace gates have been locked and patrolled since the banquet began, so the killer remains within these walls. I want him found.

  ‘You’—the Sultan stepped in front of my teacher—‘Mr Roger Ascham. I am advised by Michelangelo that you have distinguished yourself on several occasions in the unravelling of unusual crimes: a theft in Rome and a series of foul murders in England.’

  ‘I have, Your Majesty.’

  ‘You use logic as a tool, Michelangelo says.’

  ‘I did on those occasions.’

  ‘Does logic apply to the acts of madmen?’

  ‘It did in the Cumberland matter. A certain kind of woman harmed the killer as a child and so as an adult he attacked women of a similar kind.’

  The Sultan gazed at Mr Ascham for a long moment, appraising him, taking this in.

  ‘A riddle for you, then,’ he said. ‘A test of your logical approach. A murderer is on the loose. The city lives in fear. The peasants in the slums think he kills men, women and children indiscriminately, but in truth he has killed two old mullahs, six young boys and three girls in their teens. His victims are always stabbed many times and once dead, the killer flays their cheeks and jawbones. Who is he and why does he do these things?’

  My teacher returned the Sultan’s gaze. He thought for a good while before answering, and when at last he spoke, he did so slowly and in a most measured tone.

  ‘I would guess—from these very few facts you have given me—that your killer is a young man, perhaps sixteen years of age or thereabouts, and he has a facial deformity of some kind, a harelip or a tic. I would further posit that he is an idiot or of feeble mind or perhaps simply insane, but at the least he is a person of considerably low intellect.’

  I listened in amazed silence. I couldn’t fathom how my teacher could deduce such specific things from so brief a postulation.

  But he wasn’t finished.

  He went on: ‘I draw these conclusions largely from the descriptions of the victims you have given me, for in purely logical terms, the nature of the victim can tell us something about the nature of the killer. Your killer sought solace from the two mullahs, but they told him he was an abomination, the spawn of Satan, that his deformity was an outward sign of inner impurity. In a frustrated rage, he killed them, stabbing them many times.’

  ‘Interesting. How do you know he is a young man?’ the Sultan asked.

  ‘Because of his other victims. You say he killed six boys,’ Mr Ascham said, ‘which means he killed more boys than he did any other group. I’m guessing the dead boys teased him about his disfigurement. Boys are cowards: they do not taunt full-grown adults or youths a lot older than they are, hence my guess that he is about sixteen. Similarly, the girls probably rejected his advances or tittered at his ugliness, and again, in an idiot’s rage, he slaughtered them.’

  ‘This is all based on your premise that he has a deformity,’ the Sultan said. ‘How do you know for certain that this is the case?’

  ‘The skinning of the faces of the victims,’ my teacher said. ‘He imposes on them in death the same disfigurement he bears in life. The final revenge.’

  The Sultan pondered my teacher for a long time, taking in his conclusions. I myself was still somewhat stunned that my courteous and unassuming teacher could apply his logical mind so skilfully to so gruesome a riddle.

  Mr Ascham asked, ‘This murder that occurred inside your palace tonight, does it bear any similarities to the ones you have just described to me?’

  ‘It does. And I find your deductions most intriguing, most intriguing. You will come with me. Now.’

  My teacher was whisked away by the Sultan and his men.

  I did not go with him. I returned to the room I shared with Elsie to find Elsie whipping off her evening gown and putting on a different dress, the light silk thing that she had bought in the Grand Bazaar.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I whispered.

  ‘I am going to the Crown Prince’s gathering, of course,’ she said. ‘Now that your boring old schoolmaster is occupied elsewhere, this is the perfect chance to slip away. I thought you said you might come, too.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said quickly. ‘No.’ I found boys interesting, yes, but a gathering—with wine and dancing and young men—was not something I felt confident attending at all. Nor did I like the idea of venturing out into the night on an evening when a man had been murdered. But most of all, I was simply worried about Mr Ascham and I wanted to be here when he returned. I didn’t like Elsie calling him boring.

  ‘Have it your way,’ Elsie said before sweeping out of the room lightly on her toes, carrying her sandals in her hands, leaving me standing there in our room alone.

  An hour later, I heard the outer door to our rooms open and close. My teacher had returned.

  I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t. I had just sat on my bed and waited tensely, waited for the sound of that door opening. I sagged with relief when I heard Mr Giles greet my teacher. ‘Roger, what the Devil is going on?’

  Sitting with my ear to the curtain that separated my room from the vestibule, I listened in on the subsequent conversation between Mr Giles and my teacher.

  Mr Ascham said, ‘The Sultan took me to a special dungeon, separate from the main dungeons beneath the Tower of Justice, deep within the palace. It is a series of cages built into the bones of some old Roman ruins. You won’t believe what he showed me.’

  ‘What?’ Mr Giles asked.

  ‘In one of the cages of this dungeon was a mute boy of about sixteen with a ghastly harelip and the deep brown skin of a tannery worker. He scurried around the cell more like an ape than a man, grunting like an animal. He had the mind of a small child.’

  ‘You were right . . .’

  ‘I was. But then the Sultan said: “My men caught this lad six days ago, standing over the body of his latest victim. We have not told anyone that the killer has been caught. And now, tonight, I have a high-ranking cardinal from Rome, the Pope’s brother, killed in an identical manner. Can you explain this with your logic, Mr Roger Ascham?”

  ‘“Did the boy escape from his cell during the banquet?” I asked the Sultan.

  ‘“No,” he said. “He was here the whole time. Which means I have a problem.”

  ‘“You do,” I said. “You have another killer on the loose, one who is shrewd enough to impersonate the insane boy in an attempt to conceal his own crime.”

  ‘“Yes,” the Sultan said darkly. “Like many royal courts, mine is a den of ambition and intrigue, deception and flattery, of men and women who would curry my favour to enhance their stature or get into my bed. Add to that the foreign ambassadors who report my every move to their masters and one will see that it is a tangled web of enmities, alliances and outright scheming. I trust no-one.

  ‘“But you, Roger Ascham, you come here with no agenda and a reputation for acumen which you have just proved to me: with but a few facts, you were able to describe this deranged boy whom you had never seen before almost to the last detail.” ‘The Sultan said, “The cardinal’s body has been removed from view, but word of his death will get out. Keeping rumours at bay in a palace is impossible. And so I will allow the fiction that Cardinal Farnese was killed by the insane fiend to continue, but in the meantime, I want his killer found.

  ‘“I need an outsider, someone with no connection to this palace, to investigate this crime and find the murderer. And I need that investigation performed without compromising my tournament. The criminal behind this wanted to embarrass me in front of the world and he almost succeeded.

  ‘“My tournament will thus go ahead as planned, but as it does, I want you to find this killer and bring him before me. Will you accept this task?”<
br />
  ‘What could I say?’ my teacher said to Mr Giles. ‘I did not come here to meddle in palace intrigues or investigate murders. Indeed, I found the whole Cumberland affair for which I am now apparently famous to be wholly unpleasant. Plus, I have to watch over young Bess. Bringing her to Byzantium was already a bold thing to do. I didn’t expect something like this to be added to it. But he is the Sultan. What option did I have? So I just said, “Your Majesty, I will do my best to find your killer.”’

  MOVEMENTS IN THE NIGHT

  SHORTLY AFTERWARD, MR ASCHAM and Mr Giles retired, and so did I.

  But still I couldn’t sleep. Myriad images swirled inside my mind: of the cardinal’s fat naked body in the rippling pool, of his grotesque half-skinned face, of fireworks exploding, guards running and gates slamming shut.

  Beside me, Elsie’s bed lay glaringly empty.

  I stared at it a little jealously. I envied Elsie’s ability to think only of herself at such a time. I couldn’t help but put myself in the minds of others. I imagined the dead man’s no doubt horrifying final moments. I imagined the Sultan’s fury. I thought of my teacher and this great new obligation foisted upon him: to be personally commissioned by a sovereign often reduced the most resolute gentleman to a quivering wreck; my father had executed men for failing him in matters far less important than this. And lastly, I thought of Mr Ascham’s consideration of me in the whole affair: he still worried about me. Perhaps Elsie was better off living life the way she did.

  Evidently, my teacher also couldn’t sleep. Sometime after midnight, I heard him pad out into our vestibule. He was pacing, thinking. Then he apparently came to a decision because he ducked back into his room and returned a few moments later wearing his boots and leather longcoat. He was heading out.

  I pushed through the curtains.

  ‘Sir, where are you going at this hour?’

  ‘Bess?’ He looked at me askance, realising. ‘You heard my conversation with Giles, didn’t you? About the cardinal’s murder and the deranged boy in the dungeon?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then you know of my newfound commission.’

  I nodded again.

  Mr Ascham sighed. ‘I cannot sleep. I have too many thoughts running around my head. The Sultan has given me complete freedom of movement and action inside the palace, so I thought I might go downstairs and examine the body of the slain cardinal.’

  ‘May I come with you?’ I asked. ‘I too cannot sleep.’

  Mr Ascham suddenly looked at me very closely. ‘Wait a moment. This was what ailed you earlier, when you wanted to speak with me, wasn’t it? But then we were interrupted by the arrival of the Sultan. Do you know something about this matter, Bess?’

  ‘I saw the cardinal’s body. It was horrible, just lying there in the shallow pool—’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait. You saw the body as the murderer left it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did. But I didn’t mean to . . .’

  Mr Ascham held up his hand, digesting this revelation. ‘Don’t apologise, you did nothing wrong. In fact, you may be of some use. Can you show me where you saw it?’

  ‘Why, yes, of course.’

  My teacher frowned in thought. Clearly, he was weighing up his options: the help I could provide him versus the dangers of exposing a young princess of England to further gruesome sights.

  ‘You have a stronger constitution and a sharper mind than many adults I know, Bess. But there is a fiend on the loose here and your father will have my head if anything happens to you. Although’—a strange look passed over his face—‘it could actually be good for you. What better lesson for a potential future queen: to peer through a window into the hearts of men’s souls.’

  He crouched in front of me so that we faced each other nose to nose. ‘Can you promise me three things, Bess? Can you promise me that you will stay close by my side during whatever follows?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Can you promise me that you will do exactly as I say during whatever follows?’

  ‘I promise,’ I said eagerly. ‘And the third thing?’

  ‘Can you promise me that you will never ever tell Mrs Ponsonby about your participation in this affair?’

  My face broke into a broad grin. I nodded vigorously. ‘I absolutely promise.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Come then, put on a cloak, and stay close to me.’

  We stepped into the corridor outside our rooms.

  An armed man stood there and I stopped short.

  Bald and muscular, he had the deep black skin of an Abyssinian and he wore a white tunic and a bronze collar around his neck: a pre-eminent slave. His cheekbones were etched with raised dots and tribal scarring.

  Mr Ascham didn’t even miss a step.

  ‘Elizabeth, this is Latif, one of the Sultan’s most trusted eunuchs,’ he said. ‘In addition to the local languages, he speaks Latin and Greek and a little bit of English. The Sultan has assigned him to be my escort throughout the investigation. Latif, this is my student, Elizabeth.’

  The big eunuch bowed to me but said nothing. He carried an ornate bronze bow and matching quiver on his back, and two gold-hilted cutlasses on his belt.

  ‘Latif,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘I would like to see the exact place where the cardinal’s body was found and then I would like to see the body itself.’

  THE POOL AND THE DUNGEON

  IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT when Mr Ascham, Latif and I arrived at the latticed arcade that separated the Third Courtyard from the Fourth.

  The palace was silent in the moonlight. The many tables from the banquet had long since been packed away. Four sternfaced palace guards bearing scimitars and spears guarded the lattice gate leading to the reflecting pool in the Fourth Courtyard, but at a word from Latif they stepped aside and let us pass.

  As we stepped through the gate and came to the stairs beyond it, I recalled the grim sight of Cardinal Farnese’s corpse lying face-up and spreadeagled in the shallow rectangular pool.

  We beheld that same pool now.

  No corpse lay in it.

  A few small smears of blood on the pool’s right rim were the only evidence of anything untoward happening there. They wouldn’t remain for long: at that very moment, a slave girl was on her knees scrubbing them away.

  ‘He was in that pool?’ Mr Ascham asked.

  ‘Yes, he was lying on his back with his arms spread wide, Christ-like. His eyes were open and the skin around his jaw had been . . . torn away . . .’

  I guided my teacher to the edge of the pool. ‘He lay this way, with his feet pointed toward the Third Courtyard.’

  Mr Ascham surveyed the scene in silence.

  Then he turned to me and said, ‘Bess, was there much blood? On the stones surrounding the pool? On the rim, perhaps?’

  I thought about this. ‘No. Just those small smears that are being cleaned off now.’

  ‘What about the water in the pool: was it clear or was it reddened by the blood of the dead man?’

  ‘It was clear,’ I said. Despite his many wounds, I had been able to see the cardinal’s body clearly under the water’s surface.

  ‘I see.’ Mr Ascham turned to Latif. ‘Who ordered the body to be taken away?’

  ‘His Majesty the Sultan did,’ our escort said curtly. ‘He did not wish any of his guests to see it.’

  ‘Who specifically took it away, then?’

  Latif spoke briefly in Turkish with the slave girl scrubbing the rim of the pool. ‘Captain Faad, the head of the Palace Guard, took the body away.’

  ‘Where is it now? I would like to see it.’

  ‘Why?’ Latif said with a frown. ‘The man is dead. He cannot tell you anything.’

  ‘We shall see about that.’

  Latif shrugged and another quick conversation with the scrubbing girl was had. ‘The body was taken to the Sultan’s main dungeon,’ he reported.

  Mr Ascham nodded. ‘Please take us there, then, so that I may see this corpse for myself.’
/>   For as I long as I could remember, the most frightening structure in all of London was the Tower.

  It stood like a dark behemoth at the eastern extremity of the city, at the point where the Thames left the walls of London and headed for the sea. When one passed by the Tower in a boat one could hear the wails and cries of the traitors inside being tortured. A few days later, their heads would be on display atop London Bridge. As a young girl, I prayed to the Lord that I would never find myself in the Tower of London.

  But judging from the accounts I had read of English soldiers who had been captured during the Crusades to the Holy Land, the dungeons of the Moslems were an even greater Hell.

  They were the stuff of grim legend. Those Englishmen who had been captured during the various holy wars in Jerusalem had returned with tales of the most frightening barbarism. Beheadings, brandings, severed tongues and hands. And this was all before one heard of the Moslems’ instruments of torture: spiked head-cages, neck vices and heated tanks of scalding water into which naked men were plunged.

  Curiously, in the centuries after those ill-fated crusades, all of those contraptions of torture found their way into the dungeons of Europe. Europe received much knowledge from the Moslems—astronomy, mathematics, the works of the ancient Greeks, chess and, evidently, many methods of breaking a human body slowly and in great agony.

  It was with these thoughts flitting through my mind that I descended a long flight of stone stairs beneath the Tower of Justice and entered the dungeons of the Sultan.

  After passing through several tunnels we came to a guard station where Latif spoke briefly with a hard-eyed guard who bore a hideous Y-shaped scar on his right cheek. The guard let us pass and we entered a wide stone-walled chamber lit by torches and ringed by barred cells.

  An iron cage hung above a pit of hot coals; manacles dangled in front of a bloodstained wall; dry hay lined the floor. The place smelled of urine, blood and shit. Dull moans could be heard from within the cells but the guards had long ago grown deaf to them.

  Lying on a wide stone slab in the centre of the dungeon was the body of Cardinal Farnese. I imagined that the slab was usually used for beheadings or, perhaps, for amputating the hands of thieves.