The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Aren’t we moving too fast?’ I said.

  Zeno nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But that gives us more time for decision. We need to be clear of the gut by dawn. Not a lot of extra time.’ He smiled. ‘This is sailing, eh?’

  We did well enough. The others slept, and Aldo and Zeno and I took turns sailing along the ever-narrowing Sea of Marmara until it turned into the Dardanelles. And there we had our first fright – before we really saw them, we were in among a trio of armed galleys. But they were anchored out, and a line of campfires showed us that their crews were ashore. If we’d had a dozen soldiers and some oarsmen, we could have taken them all.

  But we swept by, as silent as seabirds, and then we turned to port and Zeno adjusted the rig and we were running down the strait itself. After less than an hour, he turned the bow almost due west, and we ran across the strait from the Asian side to the European side. No alarm was sounded, and if anyone saw us at all, no one called out, and then we were close inshore and the breeze was lighter and the inshore current slowed us, which was fine.

  The whole European coast was a beach. It was obvious we could land, and not long after midnight, we could see Gallipoli, and Carnak on the opposite shore, the narrowest point in the whole channel. Some men say that when the Great King, Xerxes, attacked Greece five hundred years before our Saviour came, he built his bridge of boats right there. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

  But we could see the masts of the squadron against the opposite shore, and see the pinpricks of light that were their watch fires.

  ‘You two determined to try this?’ Zeno asked quietly. Richard was asleep.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Zeno nodded. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll land you along here and meet you below the town tomorrow at midnight.’

  ‘How will I find you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll run a lantern up the mast,’ he said. ‘If I can find a lantern. You do the same. Wake your friend, now.’

  John was awake. It’s curious to me now that it never occurred to me to distrust him. He was a Turk; we were going ashore in land held by his people. Yet I also had learned that this was more appearance then reality; an Englishman might very well prefer to fight the French alongside a Moor than to join the French against the Moors.

  I’d learned an enormous amount from the Order, and from Sabraham. ‘If you will be guided by me in this,’ I said as humbly as possible, to avoid sparking Richard’s resentment, ’I would say, swim ashore with our clothes on our heads. Less danger to the boat. The current may make swimming difficult.’

  Richard nodded, muzzy with sleep. ‘Fine,’ he said, and began to strip. We all had Saracen dress, of course, and authentically dirty. In fact, what we looked like was three escaped slaves, which was problematic. We took only daggers.

  The water was far colder than I expected, but it helped to wake me, and by the time I got my feet on the gravel, after a swim of less than two hundred paces, I was tired, and my back hurt all over again – salt in wounds. But our clothes were mostly dry, or dry-ish, and we began walking south and east along the shore; soon we were trotting to keep warm. Zeno was just visible out in the strait, and he’d already come hard around and was running upstream for Marmara.

  I wished I was returning to our little island.

  As soon as we saw fishermen net-mending, we were more cautious, and we walked inland, climbing through olive groves and barked at by guard dogs, but by the grace of Saint George, we were into the gardens of the suburbs easily enough. The inhabitants were Greeks, and early risers looked at me with a mixture of hostility and fear. As Christian Greeks, they had every right to be afraid of low caste Arabs and Turks, who were as rapacious as brigands. However, a good Samaritan, a matron drawing water at a well, was delighted when Richard and I hauled her buckets up, and gave us some to drink, and then offered us, in passable Turkish, some warm flatbread and honey, and we hauled the rest of her water willingly, I promise you. She had a crucifix hung just inside the portico of her little home, and it took all my attention not to cross myself.

  She also served us a drink which was new to me; it was hot, and very bitter, sweetened with honey, and it put fire in my muscles. She called it quaveh. I have since had it many times, as a drug and as a drink; I’m very partial to it. But the good matron was my introduction to it, on the shores of the Dardanelles.

  When the sun was up we emerged from her house, and she gave us a little food to carry and an old bag like a pilgrim’s scrip to carry it. As soon as we were away from her I prayed she might be preserved from the coming assault and sack.

  We were going against the flow of people as we walked up to the gates; mostly it was poor men, which is what we were disguised as, going out to work in fields or tend animals. But there were a few dozen going in – dock workers, probably – and we went with them, and aside from a few muttered comments, we were let along until the gate itself. I had just time to be afraid, really afraid, and then we were in the line. There, a dozen Turkish ghulami in full armour, splint and maille, stood guard, two on horseback, the rest on foot, and they examined every man and every woman entering. Nor did they trouble any unduly; a modest young woman in a headscarf was examined but neither mocked nor harassed; a Turkish woman on horseback was also examined, and her voice, a little shrill, suggested that the guards were less polite to her than to the slaves and Christians.

  When it was our turn, I was afraid, but it proved that John was the man they found suspicious. Remember – I’d had some days to improve my Turkish. I could grunt with the best of them, and when the ghulam took my chin between his fingers and looked at my face, he asked, ‘And where are you from, boy?’

  ‘Frankesi,’ I said with a false smile.

  He nodded and his fingers closed on my bicep. ‘Strong,’ he said, in Turkish. ‘You fight?’

  I smiled. ‘Maybe,’ I said, a fine word that covers many ambiguities.

  He pointed at himself. ‘If you turn away from unbelief, brother, and look to Mecca, and accept Mohamed as the prophet, you could wear armour like me, and not shovel shit for some merchant.’

  I cast my eyes down. ‘I am a slave,’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and let me go. ‘We are all slaves, brother,’ he said.

  Richard Musard didn’t even get a glance – which was good; he didn’t have ten words of Turkish, and his little African Arabic would have made him seem far too educated.

  But they held John. There was a fast flow of Turkish; only then did I fully understand that they had been careful with me, identifying me easily as a foreigner. John spread his hands, and the man who had questioned me called an officer.

  John shot me a glance. I understood in a moment, and I took Richard by the sleeve.

  ‘What?’ he asked, in English, and then flushed.

  But, by the grace of God, no one noticed.

  I looked back at John. There were six ghulami around him, and I knew he was taken. I was pretty sure that I understood a little of their jabber; he was taken as a foreign Turk, not as a spy. Or perhaps as a spy. We hadn’t done anything in the line to make ourselves appear as three men together – something else I’d learned from Sabraham.

  Richard and I were in Gallipoli.

  It quickly became apparent that Gallipoli was more of a military transit camp than a fortress. There were a dozen major gaps in the walls; it looked as if an enormous siege machine had hurtled huge rocks and collapsed sections of wall twenty paces long, but a Greek told us that an earthquake had collapsed the walls some years before. The Turks, who were not precisely masters of engineering, had never paid to replace them, and had only repaired the gates and a few towers in strategic locations. The citadel was in better repair; it had four tall towers in the Greek style, and a good garrison. We went right in, carrying water with other slaves, walked out again to get more, and kept going.

  The citadel’s w
ater supply was outside the walls of the citadel. I noted that.

  But what I really noted was that the gates of the citadel were chained open – and that the gatehouse had a stairwell on the interior. I have led a few coups de main, and if you ask me, no gatehouse should ever have an interior stairwell. I won’t explain. You’ll see.

  West of the walls was an entrenched camp. Towards afternoon, we left the citadel and slipped out of the city through one of the gaping holes in the walls, cursing our ill luck; if we’d known they were there, we need never have lost John. We stood on a mound of rubble – or rather, crouched – and watched the camp. Then we joined a big pack of slaves or servants washing pots, and with them we went into the camp. I carried a great iron kettle with Richard, and I was glad to set it down where an agha ordered me.

  Then he gave me a piece of silver for my troubles, and patted my head as if I were a small child. I’ll probably say this again, but in that moment it struck me how odd it was that you can be a great knight to one man and a childlike slave to another in the space of a few days.

  When we emerged from the mess tent – for so I’m sure it was – I saw John. He was with twenty other squint-eyed Turks, being harangued by an officer as blond as my sister.

  ‘What is he saying?’ Richard demanded.

  I shook my head. It wasn’t even the Turkish that I knew. I assumed that this language was Kipchak; I’d heard it often enough, but I knew no words at all. It sounded Turkish, but then, French and English no doubt sound similar to infidels.

  I began scheming to free John. But there were a great many ghulami in the camp, and there were a dozen of them guarding his twenty companions.

  Still, we followed them.

  ‘There are a lot of empty tents,’ Richard commented.

  He was correct; two-thirds of the tents were empty, and only one end of the camp was busy. Further, as we looked – and sniffed – we could see that there was sickness here; I knew the smell, having had it myself for days.

  ‘Fever,’ I said, and Richard agreed. We tried to give the latrines a wide berth, and we did various tasks to look busy. But before I could make contact with John, an overseer came and shouted at us that we were late, and we turned and ran.

  Again, the task was carrying water, and this time it came from a well to the west, almost half a mile. I carried a yoke of buckets, and Richard carried a very European-looking cask. That took us almost an hour; the sun was setting, and no one offered to feed us, and the widow’s bread and honey were a long way away. On the other hand, I saw a fine way of approaching the empty corner of the camp from the scrubby ground to the west; a depression, almost a gully, probably created by the earthquake. In fact, one of the slaves led us back on the ‘short way’ and his trail went right over the corner of the wall, which I could see was completely unguarded.

  But after we poured our water into the cistern at the centre of the camp, we slipped back to the empty end of the camp and there was John, with more like fifty companions, all sitting cross-legged in the dust. Now they were being lectured by a tall man with a long beard – in Arabic.

  Richard looked away. ‘This is an open-air madrasah, and these men are receiving religious instruction,’ he hissed. ‘Your friend has changed sides.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. John had sworn to me for two years and two days, and he had a year to run on his time. Besides, what I saw from the men sitting was resignation. One scratched his arse; one rolled his eyes; several were asleep, or simply looked out at the setting sun. ‘If he’s changed sides, why not do it a week ago, in the other camp?’ I asked.

  I moved cautiously from tent to tent. They were empty, and it was easy to move. Richard hissed at me, and finally said that if I was determined to be captured, he was not, and he walked off.

  I let him go.

  I moved until the little square in which the Turks were receiving their lessons was opposite me, and I was behind the teacher.

  I moved very slowly out from the cover of my tent, a low wedge of white canvas. Then I waved, and John finally looked, saw me, looked away, and looked back.

  He smiled, and looked away.

  Then he looked back at me. He pointed at the ground.

  The teacher snapped something in Arabic.

  In Turkish, John said, ‘This unworthy one stays here. He will learn much, and then perhaps go against the enemies of the Faith.’

  The teacher then chastised him, in Turkish, for speaking in Turkish.

  I noted a number of things.

  I noted that when John spoke, every one of his companions looked at him. And then looked away.

  At least a dozen of his companions saw me, but none of them spoke.

  Finally, John winked.

  I rolled into a tent, and when the ulema turned his head, I was gone. I had no idea what John’s game was, but he was with his own kind – Kipchaks to a man, I suspected – and he didn’t need me. But he was glad I was there, and so were his companions.

  I suspected that meant he had promised them a rescue by the Franks.

  I waited until full dark, lifted an earthenware oil lamp and some oil, watched the sentries on the earthwork walls, and when two of them began a dispute in Turkish about horses, I slipped past them, jumped the low wall, and made my way along it, noting where it could be climbed with ease. Then I made the mile-long walk to the beach.

  I was worried for Richard, and annoyed with him, but I needn’t have worried. He was a skilled man, and I found him on a point of rocks that jutted out into the sea, sitting cross-legged.

  ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘I think John is planning a little insurrection,’ I said, and explained.

  Richard shook his head. ‘Just enough loyalty to you not to sell you to the Turks,’ he said.

  I shrugged.

  ‘People are like that,’ Richard insisted. ‘Most men would sell their own sisters.’

  I turned and looked at him. The sky was still pink; there was a little light from the new moon.

  He realised what he had just said. ‘I didn’t sell you!’ he said.

  I rolled that around.

  ‘William!’ he said urgently. ‘I didn’t sell you. I just …’ He paused. ‘I remained silent.’

  I looked out into the darkness.

  ‘You had such a bad … way … with Janet.’ He frowned. ‘I knew you would take her side. I feared … that she loved you better.’

  ‘They took me to hang me,’ I said. ‘As a routier.’

  ‘Which you were,’ Richard spat.

  ‘I was,’ I admitted.

  ‘Damn it!’ Richard spat. ‘I hate your false humility worse than your fucking arrogance.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said. Now, I confess that I think I’m a better man for not needing to debate every foolish point made by my fellow man, but in this case, I knew Richard better than he knew me. I knew that my silence would infuriate him more than my arguments, because he loved to debate. To argue. To make his will felt by others.

  ‘Admit that you were seducing Janet,’ he said. ‘Admit it.’

  I looked at him. ‘I forgive you, you know,’ I said. ‘I never touched Janet. I won’t say she doesn’t appeal to me. Merely that she didn’t want me, and that was plain. And whatever you meant, Richard, it’s past. Father Pierre Thomas rescued me. If I hadn’t been taken, who knows who, or what, I’d be today.’

  ‘So you think you are different?’ he said. ‘I find you the same.’

  I shrugged. ‘I try to be different,’ I said.

  ‘Men do not change,’ he said, as if it was an article of faith.

  ‘Yes they do,’ I said. ‘If they do not, then penance is a lie, and all Christianity is a mockery.’

  ‘So you married this great countess for her pious good works?’ Richard mocked.

  That got me. ‘Richard, you knew Emile—’ />
  ‘This is the great Emile?’ he asked. ‘Ah, I understand better.’ He thought a moment. ‘Of course, I see it now. D’Herblay. Emile.’

  And pause. Stars winked in the sky.

  ‘Oh, sweet Christ, William. I see it.’ He hung his head.

  It is difficult to see the world through another’s eyes. I had always taken for granted that Richard knew all about my love for Emile, but of course, he was largely gone those years; he wasn’t always with me, and I was very, very careful of her name. On the other hand, I was not sure I fully believed him.

  And, of course, he served with the Savoyards at Brignais, so he was already in the Green Count’s mesne and routiers were the very devil to those Savoyards, and I was one of the fallen angels in the Pantheon of routier Hell.

  I didn’t say so, but I also knew that as Richard had begun as one of us, so he must have had to distance himself from us to become one of the Savoyards.

  At some point, you can forgive, or you cannot allow yourself to forgive.

  And as Father Pierre Thomas had told me a dozen times when I confessed to him, the result of Richard’s betrayal, if it was a betrayal, had been a new life for me.

  And, as I sat with him in the darkness, I knew why he needed me to confess to seducing Janet. That would make us even. An ugly even, but even nonetheless.

  Perhaps I should have said something. But I did not. We sat on the rocks, and no ghulami came for us, and some time deep in the second watch, I saw a pinprick of light out on the water.

  I used my tinderbox to strike a light and got my little lamp lit on our fourth or fifth try. We were down to one piece of char cloth, and I thought that the damp tow would never catch, but Richard made a little tent of his hands and blew through it and I got the wick lit.