by Tim Willocks
“So now we come to the nub. Rather than advance our station, you’d sit prattling with the wine swillers and sifting gossip from the docks.” Sabato tossed his head at the scurvy entourage crowding the trestles. “You’ve spent so much time with these swinish guzzlers you’re taking on their virtues.”
“Peace!” said Tannhauser, without effect.
“The arms trade has been good but the cannon won’t roar forever. We own little property. We own no land. We own no ships.” Sabato waved a contemptuous hand at the rafters. “This is not rich. This is merely the chance to become so—a chance to dream.”
“I have no great faith in dreaming,” said Tannhauser. His last dream had been to forge a blade that his father might be proud of, and his father had never seen it. That dream had left him with an emptiness he’d never been able to replenish. He said, “We will talk no more of pepper, at least for today.”
Sabato caught his change of mood and placed a hand on Tannhauser’s thickened forearm and squeezed. “Melancholy doesn’t suit you. And it’s bad for the liver—like the air in this filthy hole. Let’s take a ride to Palermo and see what profitable mischief we might raise.”
Tannhauser clapped his own hand on top of Sabato’s and grinned. “You damnable Jew,” he said. “You’ll have me sweating on the Greek’s ship within a week. And you know it.”
Tannhauser looked up as the open double doorway fell dark and a hulking silhouette extinguished the light. It was Bors of Carlisle, de facto manager of the tavern and the last of the unlikely trinity that kept the Oracle afloat. Earlier that morning, during their daily training session, Tannhauser had caught him on the cheekbone with the pommel of his sword. Bors had made no complaint, but his blunder hadn’t left him in the gentlest of moods and the indigo lump beneath his eye was plain to see. On the weighing scale at the customs house, Bors had tipped the balance at twenty stones, much of it packed into his thighs, arms, and chest. Since his face appeared to have seen use as a smith’s anvil, the bruise didn’t seem out of place, yet as he barged into the tavern he heard some slighting reference to the fresh blemish. Worse still, it was followed by a reckless round of drunken laughter. Without breaking his stride, Bors swung by the offender and punched him in the neck with a colossal fist. His victim tumbled, choking, among his fellows and Bors continued across the room to take his habitual place at Tannhauser’s left hand. As he did so, Dana set down a jug and his personal drinking cup.
The cup had been artfully fashioned from a human skull. Bors filled the skull with wine and drained it and filled it again, then in a belated fit of manners filled Tannhauser’s beaker with what little remained. He tossed the jug back to Dana and she went to recharge it. Bors had iron-gray hair and the advance of baldness was offset by enormous eyebrows, a fine beard, and the wiry tufts that curled down from his nostrils. He nodded to Sabato Svi and turned to Tannhauser.
“A red ship has docked,” said Bors, “at the Wharf of the Hospitallers.”
“You see?” said Tannhauser to Sabato. “The Religion’s iron is yet hot. The gold rolls in.”
Bors continued: “I’ve had Gasparo load the wagons and saddle our mounts.” He looked at Sabato Svi. “Would you have him saddle yours?”
Sabato shook his head. “The Religion’s money is welcome but they regard me as one of the murderers of their Christ.”
“They are holy men of the Baptist,” countered Bors and crossed himself.
“The slave pens of the Religion groan with Levantine Jews whose prayers are for the Turks—as are my prayers, too,” said Sabato Svi. “The rumor’s already afoot that the Jews of Istanbul have financed the invasion, and while it’s false—as such libels always are—I wish it were so. When Malta falls every Jew alive will praise God.”
“Since they’re all bound for Hell, let them praise whoever they wish.”
Sabato looked at Tannhauser. “I’ve ransomed two Alexandrian captives myself—hence Moshe Mosseri’s good favor.”
“You’ve been content to trade weapons for the knights’ gold,” observed Bors.
“I’m more than happy to profit before they’re wiped out,” Sabato replied. “What kind of fanatics would die for a scorched rock?”
“They’ve gathered there to determine the Will of God, by a noble contest of arms,” corrected Bors. “And if we don’t fight the Moslems in Malta we’ll one day have to fight them in Paris, for the conquest of the world is their grand plan.”
“We?” said Sabato Svi.
“Your time will come too, believe me,” said Bors. “Furthermore, the Knights have assembled the most doughty bevy of manslayers anyone’s ever seen in one place.” He looked at Tannhauser. “They will harrow Hell on that island—and you and I are not among them to test our mettle.” He clenched a barrel-shaped fist in anguish. “It’s a violation of the natural order.”
“Mattias has made an end with killing and war. I thought you had too.”
Bors ignored Sabato and scowled like a gigantic infant. “This broil will make Saint Quentin seem like May Day capers.”
“No,” said Tannhauser. “Like two old ladies lighting votive candles in church.”
“Then you agree!” said Bors, hope rising in his breast. “And this red ship will be our last chance to play our part. Let’s pack our war chests and load them on the wagons now. Destiny calls. Don’t tell me you can’t hear it.”
Tannhauser shifted, for the blood was up in his spine too, and the reproach in Bors’s eyes was hard to meet. In Sabato’s face, by contrast, he saw the horror of seeing their plans collapse wholesale. Tannhauser toyed with his ring, a cube of Russian gold with a hole bored through its center. Its weight lent him wisdom.
“Bors,” he said, “you’re my oldest and most steadfast companion. But we three contracted to become rich men together and such we are becoming and so we have done. Whether we rise or fall, it’s battle of a different sort we’re engaged in now. Remember the motto you coined for us, Usque ad finem. Until the End. Until the very end.”
Bors concealed his thoughts behind the upraised skull cup of wine.
“However,” continued Tannhauser, “the English langue would welcome you with a huzzah. If you want to seize this last occasion to go, then go. No one here will think you false.”
Tannhauser looked into Bors’s eyes: gray with a nimbus of yellow around the iris and set in puckered nests of scarred and wrinkled skin. If Bors did choose to join the war of the Cross against the Crescent, Tannhauser would sail with him. Bors did not know this, for he wasn’t the kind of man to expect any sacrifice on his behalf, but Sabato knew all too keenly and he waited with baited breath. Dana brought a fresh jug, well aware that her charms were rendered impotent by this conference. Bors gave a blunt growl and refilled his cup.
“Perhaps it is no coincidence,” said Bors, “that I’m the only uncircumcised man sitting at this table.”
“That disharmony, at least, could be corrected,” said Tannhauser.
“You’d have to cut my head off first.”
“Both of which procedures could only improve your humor,” said Tannhauser. “Come now, give us a decision, man. Are you with us or with the fanatics?”
“As you say, we are contracted together, in the rise or in the fall either one,” grumbled Bors. He raised his wine. “Until the bitter end.”
Sabato Svi blew his cheeks with relief.
Tannhauser stood up. “Let’s go and peddle our wares.”
In his chamber Tannhauser changed into a burgundy-red silk doublet banded in diagonals of gold. He buckled on his sword, a Julian del Rey with a leopard’s head pommel in silver, and scraped a hand across his stubble in lieu of a shave. He had no mirror but was confident that he’d cut the grandest figure on the waterfront. Bors called his name, and an obscene jibe, from the street below and Tannhauser went to join him.
Eight two-wheeled oxcarts waited outside, the great beasts stoic in the sun. The carts were loaded with gunpowder, brass cannonballs, willow charcoal, a
nd pigs of lead. Bors sat his bay with impatience while Gasparo held Buraq by his reins.
Tannhauser said, “Gasparo, how goes the day?”
Gasparo was a sturdy youth of sixteen, shy but loyal to a fault. He grinned for answer, abashed at the honor of being asked. Tannhauser clapped him on the back and turned to Buraq, whose affection filled him at once with an infinite joy. Buraq was a Teke Turkmen from the oasis of Akhal, a breed that the ancients considered sacred and called Nisaean. Genghis Khan had ridden such a horse. The swiftest, the strongest, the most graceful. He held his head high and with inborn majesty. His coat was the color of a newly minted gold coin. His tail and short, tufted mane were the color of wheat. Tannhauser fed him on mutton fat and barley and would have housed him in the Oracle had his partners let him. Buraq dipped his Roman nose and Tannhauser caressed him.
“Call him the most beautiful,” he said and Buraq snorted and tossed his long neck.
Tannhauser mounted and as always felt at once like a Caesar. Buraq needed no bit, so lightly did he respond. The devotion of horse and rider was complete. Buraq moved off as if the whole expedition was his idea and the drivers cracked their whips and the oxen strained in the traces and with the riders in the lead the wagon train began its procession through the harbor.
If Sicily as a whole was uncongenial to those of nonconformist temper, Messina, which through millennia had known conquerors by the dozen, was open to foreigners, rogues, and entrepreneurs of every stripe. It was an independent republic, as populous as Rome, and paid the latest—Spanish—invaders presently stripping the island to the bone as little mind as it had paid the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, and all the rest. It was turbulent and rich, and with the sanctuary of Calabria only two miles across the straits, it harbored the lawless high and low in enormous numbers. The governor looted more for the Spanish Crown in a single year than the rest of the island yielded up in five. On the Church’s part, the Holy Inquisition formed a veritable legion of kidnappers, killers, and thieves, and numbered in its ranks knights, barons, merchants, artisans, criminals of every kind, and, it went without saying, the bulk of the civil police force. As a place for a man such as Tannhauser to make his fortune, it had no equal.
The bay of Messina formed a perfect sickle-shaped harbor, protected by fortified jetties and the cannon of the monumental arsenal that commanded the sea. Behind it stood the old walled city itself, the outlines of its towers and campanili warping in the noontide heat. The vast docks were forested with masts and spars and reefed sails, and through the sparkling light that bounced up from the water, barges stacked with baskets and bales plied the strand. Apart from a sprinkle of fishing boats and coasters, and a Spanish galleass patrolling out in the offing, the sea beyond was still, for most mariners were waiting out these dangerous days until the Grande Turke’s intentions were better known.
The Wharf of the Knights Hospitaller was half a league distant from the Oracle and on their way Tannhauser and his entourage clattered over the cobbles past chandlers and ropewalks, spice magazines and granaries, bordellos and money changers and drinking dens similar to their own. They rode past towering cargo cranes powered by slaves inside the rims of giant treadle wheels, and past careened galleys stretched out amid the smell of oakum and pitch; past food vendors roasting tripes and gambrels festooned with the carcasses of fresh-skinned lambs; past street cleaners shoveling excrement into reeking fly-blown carts; past limbless beggars and barefoot urchins and mendicants pleading for alms; past women arguing prices with stall holders; past bands of swaggering bravi with their sneers and hidden knives; past a thousand cursing voices and a thousand breaking backs. The colossal scale of the enterprise, which abounded for as far as his eye could see, reminded Tannhauser that Sabato Svi was right: they were not yet rich enough. He resolved to pay his respects to Dimitrianos on the way home and secure some decent rations for the voyage.
The Couronne was long and sleek, a hundred and eighty feet from stem to stern and only twenty feet in the beam. It was designed, like all the knights’ ships, for speed and attack. The hull was painted black and the huge lateen sails were bloodred. The gold eight-pointed cross woven thereon dazzled the eye. On the wharf to welcome the ship in their long black mantles stood a score or so knights of the Religion. All wore swords over their robes and looked ready for any hazard. Tannhauser assumed they’d arrived in recent days from the most distant priories of the Order and indeed the features of some were distinctly German or Scandinavian, and of others likely Spanish or Portuguese. They were taking it in turns to embrace a slender brother who stood amongst them. When the man turned this way to greet the next, Tannhauser recognized Oliver Starkey. Their eyes met and Tannhauser saluted and smiled. Unease flickered over Starkey’s fine-boned face; but then he too smiled and nodded, and turned back to his brethren. Tannhauser motioned to Bors.
“Let’s conclude our affairs with the captain and seek out Brother Starkey later.”
As Tannhauser stepped up the main gangplank, Bors put a hand of warning on his arm. Three men came down the walkway, the sun at their backs. Two wore Dominican robes, and odd companions they made because one, in size, would have made two of the other. Behind them came a Spaniard in his twenties, lean as a whip and dressed in a fine black doublet. His eyes and mouth were depraved and he had the look of a murderer. At his waist hung both dagger and sword. The larger of the monks walked with the bearing of a prince and the humility of a pauper. His path was arrayed against Tannhauser’s and as he passed from the glare of the light, Tannhauser saw his face and felt his gut clench.
Tannhauser said, “Ludovico Ludovici.”
“The Inquisitor?” said Bors.
The world in which Tannhauser lived might well have seemed wide to the mass of common men, but because of that very selectivity it was smaller than the map on which he moved. The map of villainy was smaller still. He felt his skin stretch taut around his skull.
He said, “Ludovico sent Petrus Grubenius to the stake.”
Bors took his shoulders and tried to maneuver him out of Ludovico’s path. “The past is past. Let’s look to our business.”
“I was a brute and Petrus made me a man. He was my teacher. He was my friend.”
“And it’s a fool who cherishes an enemy he can’t fight.”
Tannhauser yielded to Bors’s strength and took a step back; but he didn’t take his eyes from Ludovico’s face and he saw that the Inquisitor now studied him as he approached. The shorter monk, a sallow cove with disdainful features and sweating under two heavy satchels, made to walk past them as if skirting a noxious midden, but at the last moment Ludovico stopped and turned and regarded Tannhauser with courtesy. He indicated his waxy confrere.
“May I present Father Gonzaga, the legate of our Holy Office in Messina.”
Gonzaga, perplexed by Ludovico’s tarriance, managed a nod.
“This is—Anacleto.”
The soulless young Spaniard stared at Tannhauser without warmth.
“I am Fra Ludovico. But in that respect you seem to have the advantage.”
Ludovico’s voice rolled over him, calm and deep as a windless sea. Yet beneath its surface lurked monsters. Tannhauser gestured to Bors. “Bors of Carlisle.” Then he gave a short bow. “Captain Mattias Tannhauser.”
Ludovico’s attention was engaged. “Your reputation goes before you.”
“Every cock is king on his own dunghill,” Tannhauser replied.
The bluntness of the remark took Ludovico by surprise and his sensual mouth broke into a smile, as if discovering how to do so for the first time. An affronted gasp escaped Gonzaga’s throat. Anacleto watched Tannhauser as a cat watches a bird in a barnyard. Bors watched Anacleto, and fidgeted with fingers that would rather have held a knife.
“You’re a philosopher,” said Ludovico. “And a keen one.”
Despite the old hatred rekindled within, Tannhauser found himself warming to the monk. A sign that Ludovico was more dangerous than he could imagine. Tannha
user shook his head. “Your Grace flatters me. I’m a fortunate man but a simple one.”
This time Ludovico laughed out loud. “And I am a humble priest.”
“Then we meet upon the square,” Tannhauser replied.
By now Gonzaga’s astonishment was aimed at his master.
Ludovico said, “Tell me from whence you know me, Captain Tannhauser. If we’d met before today I would surely remember.”
“I saw you only once, and at a distance, and many years ago. In Mondovi.”
Ludovico looked up into the distance, as if conjuring a scene from a memory detailed and vast, and he nodded. “Apart from myself, you were the tallest man in the piazza.” His gaze came back around and the shadow of an obscure sorrow crossed his face, and Tannhauser knew that they both could recall the same pillar of flame and the feral acclamation of the same bestial mob.
Ludovico said, “The world is awash with evil, now as then, and the evidence of Satan’s handiwork is everywhere apparent.”
“I’ll not gainsay you,” said Tannhauser.
“There was wickedness afoot amongst the Piedmontese,” said Ludovico. “Purity of faith had been impaired by war and malignant doctrines flourished. Discipline had to be restored. I’m happy that you were not numbered among the guilty.”
Tannhauser spat on the dockside and covered the phlegm with his boot. “My wickedness is too common to invite the attention of such as thee,” he replied. “In Mondovi, you murdered uncommon men. Men of uncommon learning. Like Petrus Grubenius.”
A change in the light in Ludovico’s eyes showed cognition of his victim’s name, but he said nothing. Tannhauser pointed due south, toward Syracuse.
“It wasn’t far from here that the great Archimedes was murdered too, by an illiterate Roman soldier, for writing mathematical ciphers in the dust.” He turned back to Ludovico. “It’s a comfort to know that in the centuries stacked high since, Rome’s admiration for learned men has not diminished.”
No man there had ever heard an inquisitor accused of murder. To hear it twice left both Bors and Gonzaga pale with stupefaction.