“Peace be with you,” he said, and went into his father’s private apartments.
Harry hovered in the doorway.
“I will send for your mother immediately,” William said. “We will make this place once more into a home. Now leave me.”
The boy withdrew, and William stood at the window, looking down at the Golden. Horn. He was home at last, after more than thirty years. He had been only nineteen when he had left here to ride to Brusa at Prince Djem’s side; in the interim he had returned here but twice, for just a few days. Now he might stay hardly any longer, if the Sultan had need of him. But this was his home now: it belonged to Hawk Pasha.
Useless to look over his shoulder, to dwell on might-have-beens. He had known triumphs and he had known disasters; marching beside Selim there could only be triumphs in the future. Harry Hawkwood would be a fit bearer of his famous name.
He had known happiness and great sadness. He felt a great sadness now. But Giovanna was coming to him, and if she could never replace Aimée, she was still a source of great comfort.
So then…
He heard a sound and turned — and gazed at a ghost.
Involuntarily he took a step forward.
“I had to see you again,” Aimée said.
They stared at each other.
“I had to know,” she continued, “if I can live again, and laugh again. And love again.”
Still he stared at her in silence.
“Alas,” she said, “it seems I should have stayed and accepted the bowstring.”
William Hawkwood held out his hands to her.
BOOK THE THIRD
Lord of All
“One Moment in Annihilation’s Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to Taste,
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing — Oh, make haste!”
OMAR KHAYYAM
12
The Sultan
“Look there, young Hawk!” Diniz grasped his master’s arm. “We must turn back.”
Harry Hawkwood frowned across the water. On the northern horizon a few minutes ago there had been a dozen galleys creeping towards them, like huge beetles on the surface of the water.
They had not disturbed him; in the year 1525 AD, the Black Sea was very much a Turkish lake.
But now, suddenly, the galleys had disappeared beneath a wall of darkness which covered the surface of the sea and was advancing rapidly. The Black Sea was renowned for its sudden storms.
Harry glanced over his shoulder. The land, even the sun-glimmering domes of Constantinople, was lost to sight; in the pursuit of his hobby of sailing he had ventured even further afield than usual.
He looked forward. His craft had no oars. She had been designed for him by a Venetian; broader in the beam and deeper in the draft than any galley. She was propelled by a lateen sail, controlled by a boom almost as long as the thirty-foot hull. She was fast and handy, and in her he could escape the heat and the bustle of the greatest city in the world.
Now she would have to prove her seaworthiness beyond doubt; there was no time for him to regain the shelter of the Bosphorus.
But she was undecked, too, and could easily fill with water.
His men watched him anxiously. The six of them were devoted to the name of Hawk, and equally to this youngest member of the illustrious family. They had sailed with him for many years.
“We must ride it out,” he said. “Take down that sail, double the lines, and pay it out over the bow.”
They worked with a will.
“You break out every utensil that can be used for bailing, Diniz,” Harry told his servant.
Diniz hurried about his duties.
Harry studied the horizon, now hardly more than a few miles distant and closing every second. He wondered how the galleys were faring: they were hardly better fitted to withstand a storm than this little yacht.
He had no sensation of fear. Harry Hawkwood had never known fear. When his father, John Hawkwood the Younger, had been murdered by the Sultan Bayazid, he had been but a babe in arms. As he had grown to manhood, he had ridden at the side of his uncle, William Hawkwood, and, after the deposition of Bayazid by his son, under the banner of the new Sultan Selim himself, that greatest of warriors.
Harry Hawkwood had known nothing but triumph throughout his life…unlike, he would sometimes reflect, his famous forebears.
He was unlike them, too, in his love for the sea. William Hawkwood could not understand this passion; the Hawkwoods had always been artillerists, men with their feet firmly planted on the land. No Hawkwood before young Harry had ever dreamed of mounting a gun of any size on board a ship!
His mother, Giovanna, had an answer to his strange obsession: her father had been a Neapolitan sea captain, as had his father before him. Indeed, she had been sailing on one of her father’s trading ships when it had been taken by a Turkish corsair and she was sold as a slave in the market at Constantinople.
That was long in the past. Under the aegis of the Hawkwoods she had regained her laughter and her confidence. But she was pleased that her only son took pleasure in the sea.
Not that she would be pleased, at this moment, to look from the window of the Hawk Palace outside Galata and watch the Black Sea swept by a summer storm.
It was nearly upon them. But Harry was as ready as he could be. The sail had been thrown over the bow, attached to the yacht by the strongest lines they possessed; it would act as an anchor and not only keep them up to the wind, and thus reduce the chance of their being swamped by the waves, but it would also slow their rate of drift and save them, he hoped, from being dashed ashore.
The crew meanwhile crouched in the bottom of the boat, armed with bailing cans.
Harry tied a rope round his waist and secured it to one of the exposed ribs; there was nowhere stronger. Then he wrapped both hands around the tiller, and uttered a great laugh as the first raindrops splattered across his face. Six feet three inches tall, with a mass of red-brown hair flying in the wind, his firm muscles exposed to the elements as he wore but a loincloth, he was in every way a Hawk and his men loved him for it.
The sky was now obliterated by the sweeping clouds. The rain teemed down and for the moment calmed the sea, but the wind was already tearing at the waves, causing spray to fly. The bailing cans got busy.
Harry Hawkwood strained on the tiller, face upturned to the driving wind and water, keeping the bows up to the seas. They were held there, anyway, by the waterlogged sail, but even so kept threatening to pay away, so great was the force exerted on them.
The day became dark as night, and the seas rose higher. Waves twelve, fifteen feet in height reared about the little ship; most broke on the bows and scattered away to either side, but enough came over the gunwales to leave several inches of water slopping to and fro in the bilges. As fast as this was emptied over the side, more came in.
Yet they were holding their own. Harry Hawkwood gave another shout of triumph, as if challenging the elements to do their worst.
Thunder rumbled and lightning bolts slashed at the sea to either side. The bailing was slackening as the men became exhausted. And still the storm raged.
There came a twang from forward, and one of the lines holding the sail parted, chafed through on the gunwale. There was still a second rope, but that too was chafing, seriously.
Harry realised that he might have laughed too soon. The wind was stronger and the waves higher than anything he had previously experienced. But there was nothing to be done save hang on and wait for the weather to improve.
As the second rope parted, the yacht immediately began to fall away. Harry knew that he could no longer keep her heading the wind — her safest position — and that his only hope was to bring her right round and try to run before the storm. The risk was that they would pile up on the rocks to the south, some twenty miles away.
But bringing her about without being swamped by waves was going to prove an enormo
us business; he had no means of gaining way to expedite the turn.
He drew a long breath.
“Cut the sail free,” he bawled.
The canvas was still held by the other ends of the frayed warps.
Diniz scrambled forward, soaked by the water splashing over the bows as the boat began to roll. He drew his knife and cut the ropes with a single sweep.
“Bail!” Harry shouted, and thrust the helm hard over.
There was almost no response. The yacht fell away, but she was doing so anyway. The men shouted in alarm as they were picked up on a wave, hung there for a moment, and then went over. Harry was catapulted from the stern into the sea, still held by the rope round his waist. Water clogged his nostrils as he sank beneath the surface. Desperately he drew his own knife to cut himself free, then reached upwards and found the ship again.
She had capsized, but there was sufficient cordage surrounding her to be grabbed and clung to, while the waves broke right over the keel. She showed no signs of sinking, however; there was too much air trapped in the hull.
He twisted his head from side to side, peering through the teeming rain and the flying spray to discover which of his men had survived. Then he saw Diniz holding on to the upturned bowsprit, rising and falling in the huge swell; there were others, too, clinging on for dear life.
So much for pleasure sailing, Harry thought.
*
Harry had no idea how long they clung to the half-submerged hull. One of the men close to him released his grip and drifted away, to disappear under the waves. He encouraged the others as best he could by yelling out that the weather was abating, as indeed it was. The seas were going down and the rain had stopped. There was even a patch of blue sky above.
But the water was very cold. He summoned all his failing strength and, clinging by fingernails and toes, climbed up the overturned hull to sit on the keel, peering round him into the still lowering afternoon. And then he saw a dark shape not half a mile away.
Reaching down for his surviving crew members, he slowly pulled them up beside him, one after the other. When he had got Diniz up safe, there were six of them; two had drowned.
But it could easily have been all of them.
He set them then to shouting and waving, and gradually the dark shape approached, her oars striking the water rhythmically. Behind her came others; the galley squadron had survived unharmed.
And now Harry could make out the ensign flying above the lead ship.
“Halloo!” he shouted. “Halloo, Khair-ed-din! Halloo!”
The oars ceased to beat the water, and the galley came to a halt. A boat was put down from forward, and rowed rapidly towards the upturned hulk.
The shipwrecked men were transferred, and a few minutes later were climbing up the ladder let into the galley’s bow. Harry was hurried along the gangway, between rows of oar-slaves already being whipped into action again, and on to the wide stern deck. Waiting for him was a heavily-built man whose rich dress was dominated by the full red beard that hung midway down his chest.
“Khair-ed-din.” he said, seizing the older man’s hands. “I think you have just saved my life.”
Khair-ed-din grinned. “Young Hawk,” he replied, “yours is a life worth saving.”
*
Harry Hawkwood had known Khair-ed-din — and his younger brother Arouj — for years. They had always been unashamed pirates; even the Turks knew that.
The brothers’ more normal haunt was the western Mediterranean — calm, sunlit waters that might have been designed by God especially for the use of galleys. Those were waters which did not interest the Ottoman empire. The sea itself hardly interested them; the Turks were horsemen, not sailors. That a war fleet was necessary to protect their far-flung dominions had been obvious even to the Conqueror, but the fleet’s business was supporting and transporting armies. The Ottomans could not conceive of ships acting independently.
Khair-ed-din and Arouj were not true Ottomans. They were indeed Turks, but had been born and grown to manhood on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea. They had been seamen almost from the moment they could first walk. No one knew for certain when that had been; their father had been illiterate, and no record had been made of either of their birth dates. But Khair-ed-din was at least sixty years old.
For long he had been content to play the lieutenant to his younger, more brilliant brother. From fishermen they had become masters of a galley, and then a squadron of galleys. From the Aegean they had taken their ships west, to where the Mediterranean was virtually a Spanish-Italian lake. Spain was the greatest maritime power in the world. The discoveries of the Genoese seaman, Christopher Columbus, a generation ago, had given the spur to an already burgeoning national ambition, which had been set alight by the capture of Granada, the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, in January 1492.
Now tales were spreading of great ships ploughing their way across the Atlantic Ocean to the goldmines of the New World, to bring back to Cadiz and Barcelona, Seville and Cartagena more wealth than anyone had ever dreamed could exist.
Not even Arouj had ventured out into the Atlantic. He had known nothing of the currents and tides, the tremendous winds and the huge seas which lay beyond the Straits of Gibraltar; and what he had heard had dissuaded him from any suicidal adventures.
But the wealth of the Indies spilled over into the Mediterranean, as Spain expanded. In those calm waters even an ocean-going carrack might lie becalmed, helplessly vulnerable to attack from a quarter her guns could not reach. The Spanish and their Genoese allies also used galleys, but none were so fast or commanded with such desperate courage as those of Arouj.
That the brothers had not in the beginning sailed beneath the Ottoman flag, and indeed had scarcely recognised the Sultan as their overlord, meant nothing to the Spanish and Genoese. Suffice it that Arouj was a Turk. No nation in the world hated the Turks more than did the Genoese. A price had been put on Arouj’s head, and in time been redeemed: he had fallen in battle. Spain had breathed a sigh of relief. But then Arouj’s brother Khidr, for the first time calling himself Khair-ed-din, had taken command, and in him the dons had found an enemy more brilliant and more implacable even than the one they had slain.
But Khair-ed-din had been ambitious for more than the fame of being accounted the greatest pirate the world had yet seen. The Moorish principalities along the northern coast of Africa were in a state of disarray, fighting each other when they were not fighting the Spanish. Khair-ed-din dreamed of setting up his own kingdom there. To do this he needed powerful support, so he had taken himself to Constantinople, knelt before the Sultan, and put forward his plans.
Selim had been no more than vaguely interested. He, above all of the sultans, was a soldier rather than a sailor. He had granted Khair-ed-din the title of beylerbey, and told him to do what he wished, enlist such volunteers as he could find.
That had not been enough, and Khair-ed-din had appealed to Selim’s general, Hawk Pasha, but William Hawkwood was even more land-bound than his master. So Khair-ed-din had gone back to piracy and dreams.
But he had taken to visiting Constantinople regularly; since he was now a beylerbey, he had to be treated with respect. He had also made friends there; one of them was young Hawk. Harry Hawkwood had already known the fascination of the sea, the envy of watching the galleys put forth, bound no man knew where, to encounter no man knew what. Harry had appealed to his uncle to allow him to volunteer for the pirate enterprise, but William Hawkwood had refused. Harry was already nearly thirty, a colonel in the Ottoman artillery, a man destined for greatness; and greatness was not to be found at sea.
So Harry had to content himself with sailing for a hobby. A hobby which had today turned out so catastrophically.
*
They sat in the richly-carpeted cabin of the galley and drank coffee. Heavy embroidered drapes swayed to and fro over the stern windows, and the door was closed to keep out most of the stench from the galley benches, although they could still hea
r the inescapable beat of the drum that regulated the strokes, the occasional crack of the whip when one of the boatswains felt a slave was not pulling his weight.
It was not a system Harry had ever considered deeply. Though brought up a Christian by both his mother and his uncles, he was a Turk by adoption in every way. And besides, the Christian powers who sailed the Mediterranean also employed galleys, and slaves to row them.
Now he was just content to let the warmth seep through his benumbed body, and to smile at his friend.
“What brings you north of the Dardanelles?” he asked his host.
Khair-ed-din grinned and tapped his nose. “Even a pirate must do some honest trading sometimes, young Hawk. I have had a prosperous voyage — until that storm tried to rob me of my profits.”
“You mean that, together with your honest trading, you have found somewhere else to loot?”
“The Russians are always worth looting, young Hawk. Oh, they have nothing of their own worth taking. But their women…” Khair-ed-din smacked his lips. “They are a perpetual delight.”
Even for a Turk, Khair-ed-din’s sexual capacity was reputed to be enormous. It was said that in the little harbour of Algiers, which he had made his western Mediterranean base, he kept a harem several hundred strong.
It was not a rumour that greatly interested Harry Hawkwood. He was a Turkish nobleman and at thirty-five years old, his life had not lacked women. He had been given his first concubine at the age of sixteen, and his first wife at the age of twenty. Now he possessed two wives and four concubines, and was the father of several children — the two youngest of which were the all-important boys.
He was fond of his family, but the relationship with his women was on a purely physical basis. For intellectual feminine company he sought out his mother and his aunt, and he envied his uncle the possession of two such supremely beautiful and intelligent wives.
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