The Tournament

by Matthew Reilly

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘A short while later, after the prince had a whispered discussion with Rahman, Selim asked for me to come before him and spread my legs so he could examine me—which I am told is what he does.

  ‘I lay before him and stretched my legs wide. I’m glad I have always danced, Bessie, for I can spread my legs wider than most other girls and I saw that this impressed him greatly. Then he waved me away with a grin and the words, “Perhaps tomorrow night, English rose.”

  ‘Honestly, Bessie, I spent the rest of the evening in a state of dreamy repose, lying on a hot marble island, beads of sweat glistening all over my naked body, with my head thrown back and my toes drawing circles on the surface of the water, but always keeping my eyes on the prince, even as he occupied other girls. I am making him desire me, Bessie.’

  ‘You do appear to be close to snaring him, Elsie.’

  ‘I most certainly am and I cannot wait for the next gathering tomorrow evening!’ Elsie said excitedly. ‘For when it comes, I aim to get the Crown Prince between my thighs and if I can do that, I like my chances of becoming his queen.’

  We arrived at the gates to the Sultan’s private animal enclosure, where we were met by a party headed by Ivan, the diminutive Grand Prince of the Duchy of Muscovy. With him were some local palace officials and a few foreign dignitaries.

  The Sultan’s menagerie stood to the north of the palace complex, not far from some military docks on that shore of the headland and it was enclosed by a high brick wall. The gates to the enclosure rose before us—black cast-iron bars set into a soaring arch. Behind the wall, animal sounds could be heard: the trumpeting of an elephant, the growl of a jungle cat, the agitated tweeting of birds surrounded by elephants and jungle cats.

  Ivan saw me and smiled broadly. During the whole of our previous unpleasant encounter, I had not seen him smile once. It made me suspicious.

  ‘Princess Elizabeth!’ he said brightly, in heavily accented English. ‘I am so pleased you could come. When we met before in the queue to meet the Sultan I did not know who you were, but I asked after you and discovered you are a princess of England, daughter of King Henry himself. I am a keen student of England and a great admirer of your father’s achievements. Please forgive me if I was rude when we last encountered each other. My party was late and I was angry with my men and then you and I met in unfortunate circumstances. I humbly apologise and beg your forgiveness.’

  I was momentarily speechless. The rude boy had vanished and a most pleasant young man had taken over his body. Mr Ascham, curse him, might have been right.

  ‘You are lucky that I do not make judgments of people based on first meetings,’ I said smoothly. ‘I have found it is sensible to view someone at least a second time before I make an adverse conclusion as to their character.’ I ignored Elsie’s stifled cough behind me.

  Ivan seemed relieved. ‘You are as wise as you are beautiful. Again, I am so pleased you have come.’

  No-one had ever called me beautiful before. With my orange curls and pale freckled skin, not even I considered myself to be beautiful. But when this boy said it, it made me feel, despite my previous misgivings about him, far more partial toward him. I quite liked being called beautiful.

  At that moment a horn blared, and we all turned to see the Sultan and the Crown Prince coming down the winding path from the palace, leading an enormous retinue of guards, officials and other hangers-on.

  Ivan said to me, ‘Please excuse me, Elizabeth. I have duties to perform. But I do hope we shall get the opportunity to converse later.’

  With a smile, he went off to greet the Sultan.

  Moments later, the great iron gates to the menagerie were opened and, led by the Sultan, Crown Prince Selim and Prince Ivan, we were ushered through them. As he passed by, the Sultan saw me and gave me a silent nod of recognition, while the Crown Prince spied Elsie and gave her a different kind of nod.

  We went inside.

  THE SULTAN’S INCREDIBLE MENAGERIE

  THE SULTAN’S MENAGERIE WAS, essentially, a large four-sided courtyard that was open to the sky. It had barred cages on three sides and on the fourth was the arched entry gate. A paved path, framed by cleverly planted bushes that prevented one from seeing every cage at once, meandered past all the cages before arriving back at the main gate.

  Upon seeing Suleiman’s menagerie and his collection of exotic animals inside it, I vowed that should I ever become Queen of England, I would open up the animal menagerie in the Bulwark of the Tower to the public at large. Every man and woman, no matter what their station in life, should be able to see the wonders of the animal kingdom.

  The Sultan’s collection of exotic beasts was simply extraordinary.

  He had two elephants and one giraffe, five fearsomely large snakes, a dozen monkeys, cheeky and playful, a vast collection of birds from all over the world, a zebra, two ostriches, an aurochs, an oryx, and not one but two varieties of tiger—one from the jungles of India and a larger white one from the chill lands far to the east of Russia. In one of the bigger cages, I beheld three wolves: they had grey coats, powerful shoulders and cruel stares. They watched every individual who passed them by with calculating interest, their pale eyes unblinking. I found them quite unnerving.

  Taking pride of place in the very centre of the beautiful compound, surrounded by the ring of bushes and with its own inner path so that the Sultan could make an uninterrupted circuit around it, was a brand-new and very high iron cage.

  In it was Ivan’s gift to the Ottoman ruler: the mighty Russian bear.

  It was, I must admit, a most magnificent beast. It paced on all fours inside its enormous cage, but then upon seeing the Sultan and the crowd gathered behind him, it rose onto its hind legs, standing a full twelve feet tall, and bellowed angrily in the Sultan’s face.

  The Sultan stood his ground.

  ‘He likes you,’ Ivan said in Greek, grinning. The Sultan snorted a laugh. The crowd chuckled nervously. ‘But please don’t get too close to the bars. He has a considerable reach,’ Ivan added.

  As I looked at the great bear in its massive cage, occupying pride of place in that remarkable menagerie, I thought of the way my countrymen used bears: they tormented them, tied them down to stakes while fighting dogs were permitted to attack them for sport and wagers. I felt ashamed.

  ‘The Russian bear,’ Ivan said in common Greek so all could understand, ‘is the largest predator to walk on land. It can kill a man with a single swipe. Fortunately for us, bears rarely kill men. They eat mainly berries and roots and sometimes young deer, but most of all, big bears like this one love salmon.’ On cue, the animal keeper beside Ivan threw a dead salmon at the bear. With surprising speed, the bear reached through the bars, caught the fish in its claws and ripped it clean in two with a great crunching bite. The crowd gasped in awe.

  ‘The bear is slow to anger but when angry, by virtue of its size and strength, it is a force to be reckoned with.’ Ivan grinned. ‘Much like the Duchy of Muscovy.’

  The Sultan smiled indulgently, appreciating and allowing Ivan’s show of pride.

  I was aware that Suleiman’s armies had had skirmishes with the Rus peoples to the north of his empire, but it was not an area that the Moslem sultan seemed interested in conquering. As Ivan had intimated, the population there was large. The Rus people were also notoriously tough folk, hardened by their bitter climate.

  Crown Prince Selim, however, was not so indulgent. He said, ‘Your duchy still pays us tribute, little prince. Mark your words or my father may decide to send a governor there. When I am Sultan, I might just do that.’

  Ivan’s face went red, but he bit his tongue.

  The Sultan saved him. ‘Come now, Selim, the lad meant no offence. He was merely speaking out of pride, pride for his homeland and for this magnificent beast. Thank you for this gift, Prince Ivan. I shall treasure it.’

  A short while later, the Sultan departed and with him the Crown Prince and most of
his entourage. As he left, the Crown Prince smiled at Elsie and she returned his smile brightly; then he was gone. The remaining guests, perhaps twelve of us, were left to stroll through the wonderful menagerie at our leisure.

  Elsie and I were peering into the monkey cage when Ivan came up beside me and said in English, ‘I have heard stories of your father, King Henry. He is a great man, a king who will be remembered as . . . I do not know the word . . . grozny.’

  ‘Grozny?’ I said.

  ‘It means, how do I say this, to inspire fear or awe in one’s enemies. Terrible—wait, no. No, that is wrong. Formidable. Grozny.’

  My father certainly met those requirements, at least in my eyes.

  Ivan went on: ‘By breaking from the Roman Church and taking its lands, your father announced to the world that he was a true king, one who has no master under the sky but himself. He put cannons on warships and made England a powerful seafaring nation. But most of all, he crushes anyone who opposes him. I am informed that over the course of his reign, he has executed over twenty thousand men.’

  I had heard that the figure was almost three times that but I did not feel the need to correct Ivan.

  Ivan said, ‘My nation is vast but it is largely populated by peasants. It is backward. If it were united under a strong king, then I believe it would be formidable, a bear among nations. I wish to modernise my lands, based on what your father has done in England. I must bend the Orthodox Church to my will, like your father did; I must build ports and a navy, like your father did; and I must act decisively and swiftly against any and all who oppose me, like your father has done.’

  This talk of emulating my father made me uneasy. I would have wagered that Ivan did not know that as he had aged, my father had become increasingly erratic in his behaviour—erratic and paranoid—which in turn had made him even more brutal in his suppression of those who opposed him. This was, after all, a man whose capacity for brutality had included beheading two of his wives. And yet as a young man, my father had, by all accounts, been sweet and romantic, a poet, a composer, a dreamer. In those younger days, I was often told, he’d been dashingly handsome, clean-shaven and athletic. Now, as his mind grew paranoid and grotesque, his body followed: he was now hunched and paunchy, with a beard to hide the double chin that mocked his vanity.

  ‘He is indeed his own man,’ was all I could say.

  I looked at Grand Prince Ivan—in his mid-teens, but a few years older than I—and I thought of the two versions of him that I had witnessed: the charming young man on display today and the angry-faced boy of a few days previously. He seemed a lot like my father: two persons trapped in the same body.

  And then it occurred to me. My father, for all his marriages and all his power, was miserable. Miserable in a way that only a person with two conflicting selves could be: he wanted to be loved by all his subjects, yet when he was loved by them, he doubted their motives.

  I did not wish such a fate on young Ivan—or on myself, for that matter, should I ever become queen—and I was about to say something to that effect when he went on.

  ‘Despite all his impressive achievements,’ Ivan said, ‘Your father might do well to adopt a technique of the Sultan’s. The Sultan employs a vast network of informants and spies in his city, a clandestine force that reports to him on the moods and actions of his people. I think when I am king I shall create such a force.’

  I felt that it was time to leave. I nudged Elsie. ‘Thank you for the invitation today, Prince Ivan. I enjoyed seeing your bear. It is a most remarkable creature and you are a most intriguing young man.’

  We started to leave.

  ‘Princess Elizabeth!’ Ivan hurried after us. ‘May I be so bold as to ask something of you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘May I write to you? In England. After this tournament is over.’

  I looked at him for a long moment. It couldn’t hurt and I imagined my teacher would certainly approve. ‘You may,’ I said, and then Elsie and I left the menagerie.

  We returned to our rooms around lunchtime to find Mr Giles practising chess moves and Mr Ascham standing at the window, staring out over the Sea of Marmara, so consumed by his thoughts that he did not even notice our arrival.

  ‘Mr Ascham,’ said I, ‘You really must see the Sultan’s menagerie before you leave Constantinople. It is a truly exceptional collection of animals laid out in a most ingenious fashion.’

  My teacher smiled tightly, but he did not answer me.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘I went to see Maximilian of Austria in his rooms this morning,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘And I found him dead.’

  THE DEATH OF A PLAYER

  MY TEACHER EXPLAINED.

  After breakfast, he had informed Latif that he desired to visit Maximilian of Austria in his rooms, to interrogate him about his multiple conversations with Brunello the chef: Mr Ascham was still very suspicious of the meal that had killed Cardinal Farnese and thus equally suspicious about anyone who had a connection with its preparation.

  Like most of the other players, Maximilian had been quartered in a special pavilion of rooms that backed onto—but did not have access to—the Harem. With Latif at his side, my teacher knocked on the Austrian player’s door but received no reply.

  He knocked louder. Still no reply.

  Inquiries were made: Maximilian had not received breakfast in his rooms that morning. Nor had he been seen that morning by the guards stationed at the various palace gates. The night guard for the players’ pavilion was found and he reported that he had seen Maximilian return to his rooms very late last night, with a veiled girl in his company, presumably a prostitute. Having been beaten in the first round of the tournament, Maximilian of Vienna did not need to worry about retiring early any more.

  But that was the last anyone had seen of Maximilian. He had returned to his rooms with the girl and neither of them had emerged.

  A key to the pavilion was found and two guards were brought to act as witnesses. Then Latif unlocked the outer door to Maximilian’s rooms.

  My teacher entered behind the eunuch and immediately beheld a grisly scene.

  Maximilian lay spreadeagled on his bed, stark naked, his bloodshot eyes wide with apparent shock, his mouth open, his wholly black tongue visible for all to see, an opium pipe lying askew on the mattress beneath his outstretched open hand. There by his side in the bed, equally naked and equally still, was the virgin girl, Helena, who, two days earlier, Maximilian had presented to the Sultan as a gift from his master, Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria. She, too, had a blackened tongue and was also dead.

  ‘You, sir,’ I said, ‘are starting to look like a curse. Anyone to whom you desire to speak is suddenly found dead.’

  ‘It would seem so,’ Mr Ascham said. ‘And this one was a player in the tournament. It would seem no-one is safe in this palace.’

  ‘Were there any wounds on their bodies, as there were with the cardinal or the chef and his wife? Could you determine how they were killed?’

  ‘There was no evidence that they were killed, Bess,’ my teacher said. ‘The scene bore all the signs of a simple clandestine love affair: the player from Austria had fallen in love with the virgin “gift” he had brought to Constantinople for the Sultan. They frolicked in his bedchamber, yet from the way we found them—naked with blackened tongues—it was clear that their intimate activities were accompanied by opium use. And as far as I could tell, it was the opiates that killed them. Either they imbibed too much or perhaps the local variety of opiate was too powerful for their constitutions.

  ‘One of the guards went and fetched the sadrazam. He arrived soon after and just shook his head sadly when he saw the bodies. It was something he had seen before: foreigners overindulging in the potent local opiate.’

  I said, ‘So you are saying that there have been two further deaths but they are unrelated to our investigation. An unhappy coincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless.’

  ‘So it
would seem . . .’ my teacher said slowly.

  ‘You do not appear convinced.’

  ‘Because I am not. Because this is a coincidence that is explained too easily for my liking. I am starting to see a pattern. Cardinal Farnese’s death was dressed up as the work of a lunatic, because you can’t kill off a famous cardinal without an explanation. Brunello and his wife’s deaths were made to look like suicides. And now Maximilian. He was a well-known chess player, a participant in the tournament. If someone wanted him killed, they would need to dress up his death, too, and I think they did. Which was why, when the guard went to fetch the sadrazam, I examined Maximilian’s and the girl’s bodies, and I found something odd.’

  ‘What?’ My eyes widened.

  ‘They both had some subtle but distinct bruising around their nostrils and their cheeks. Here’—he pressed the fleshy part of my cheeks on either side of my mouth—‘and here’—he squeezed my nostrils shut.

  ‘What do you make of such injuries?’ I asked.

  Mr Ascham paused, looked about himself as if to see if there was a listener in the room with us. ‘I do not think they accidentally overindulged in the use of an extra-potent local opiate. I think the opiate was forced on them. I think someone held them down, pinched their nostrils together and forced their mouths open by pressing their cheeks, and made them inhale the opiate in a quantity that killed them.’

  I gasped. ‘And yet it would appear to be an accident. Well, to anyone but you.’

  ‘Yes,’ my teacher said. ‘My suspicions aroused, while we waited for the sadrazam, I examined Maximilian’s bedchamber. I noticed his trunk. It was filled with what one would expect: clothes, shoes, a chess set. But my attention was drawn to a pair of his shoes standing by the door. They were dress shoes, cut in the Austrian style, made of fine black leather with brass buckles.’

  I started. ‘Wait. Did they have wooden soles and a nick?’

  ‘No. They had leather soles with only wooden heels. But the soles of these shoes did bear curious marks on them: dark spots of blood and other patches of wetness, and an odd grey powder. At some point, their wearer—Maximilian—had stepped on wet ground, for the fine grey powder had adhered to the moistened soles. I sniffed the powder: it smelled like charcoal, but infused with a curious salty, fishy odour.’