Thief's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  He almost jumped as a figure settled at the rail to his left, and then others to the right. The monks had gathered to watch their destination approach. After decades of living under the Ottoman regime they had returned to a Christian world, and their joy and relief was almost palpable.

  Skiouros lowered his face so that the hood covered his features more thoroughly and watched the water pass for several more minutes until the ship slowed, shouts echoing back and forth among the crew. Sails were furled and obscure things thing-ed. Slowly, the caravel approached the wooden jetty.

  The young 'novice' leaned on the rail, his eyes roving across the city that would likely be his home for the foreseeable future as the crew went about their tasks, throwing and hauling ropes and cables and performing the many arcane little jobs that seemed to be required even to manoeuver a ship through a tiny arc. Suddenly the hull bumped against the jetty, making the monks jerk back, gripping the rail to stay upright.

  With another two bounces and a long grinding of timber against timber - a sound that brought a reproving glare for the crew from their captain - the Isabella arrived in Crete.

  Skiouros smiled within his hood. Whatever happened now, he was finally here. He could start to carve out whatever future he wished, but at least it had begun. Lykaion would be taken to rest safely in honour in the church at the heart of this strong citadel, where he could remain until the day Skiouros could take him home in safety and not place him in danger of abuse and destruction. That he rested in a Christian church was perhaps a little inappropriate, given his beliefs, but Skiouros didn't think that God - or Allah for that matter - would mind; he was certain that Lykaion wouldn't.

  Then there was the matter of his letters. Here - a Greek land under Venetian rule - he was likely to find someone to teach him any number of languages. He had enough money in his purse to see him out a number of months and by then, he would have settled on his course.

  Unfinished business…

  He knew what the end result of his new life would need to be, but how he would navigate the twisting channels of fate to reach that end was still an unknown. One day he would see Prince Cem, the usurper sultan, pay for his part in events that had shaken the world and killed Lykaion, son of Nikos the farmer.

  One day… but not today.

  A boarding plank was run out from the deck down to the jetty, wooden ridge-strips nailed to its surface to aid the grip of the passengers' booted feet. Skiouros remained at the rail for a while, watching as the various paying passengers with whom he had had no contact disembarked. Finally, the monks began to move along the rail and descend.

  At the jetty, the purser was giving them directions to the church - somewhat unnecessarily, given that the top of the great dome and its ornate bell-tower were visible above the warehouses and other buildings that lay between. As Nicolo finished his explanation, the priests thanked him and began to stride along the jetty towards the port. Skiouros, still at the bottom of the boarding ramp, to the rear of the group and lagging behind, paused and raised a hand.

  "Rest well, Lykaion. I'll come back for you."

  As the monks disappeared with their 'holy' relic, Skiouros hesitated. He didn't want to be too close to the brothers so that they noticed him and made sure he joined them at the church, but he also couldn't afford to separate until he was safely away from the jetty where he could lose the black robe and melt into the crowd. Nicolo began to mark the passengers off his list as the crew started unloading the goods with a winch and rope further back along the jetty.

  After what Skiouros deemed an appropriate pause, he stepped down the last two feet of plank, turning as though to hurry and catch up with the rapidly disappearing black shapes of the other monks.

  Nicolo stepped in front of him, folding his arms.

  Skiouros frowned and made to duck past him, but the purser merely sidestepped and gestured up the plank with a pointed finger. Skiouros felt his spirits sink. Turning, he saw Captain Parmenio at the top of the ramp, beckoning.

  Acknowledging defeat, Skiouros stomped disconsolately back up the plank, Nicolo right behind him, almost breathing down his neck.

  "Get up here" Parmenio sighed.

  Skiouros stepped onto the deck and shuffled in front of the captain, a dozen different stories and excuses fighting their way between brain and mouth, none of them quite reaching the level of credibility that he would need.

  "Tell this young man what we do with stowaways, Nicolo."

  The Venetian purser, his Greek slightly accented yet fluent, cracked his knuckles.

  "We throw 'em overboard, captain. Or if we're on land still, we hand 'em over to the authorities."

  Parmenio raised an eyebrow and waited. With a sigh, Skiouros peeled off the cowl and removed the small cylindrical hat.

  "Technically, captain, I don't think I count as a stowaway. The purser here will no doubt corroborate the fact that precisely the right number of passengers disembarked."

  "Don't get clever" snapped Nicolo, delivering a stinging smack across the back of Skiouros' head from a hand adorned with at least three gold rings.

  Parmenio narrowed his eyes.

  "Some poor sod of a novice has had to go back to the Patriarch in Istanbul and tell the head of his church that he was mugged! At least I hope he did. You don't have the look of a murderer…"

  Skiouros' heart skipped a beat. "He's unharmed" he said quickly. "A lump on his head, maybe, but that's all."

  "You've put me in an awkward position, young stowaway. See, the Patriarchate in Istanbul is going to want to know what happened to the man who mugged their novice. He's going to make enquiries and find out that I transported the right number of monks. And I still have to visit Istanbul from time to time. See the difficulties you've put upon me?"

  Another slap from behind snapped Skiouros' head forward.

  "You didn't know" he replied shrewdly. "If you hadn't stopped me now, you could have pleaded innocence."

  "I still can. But I want to know two things before I even contemplate agreeing to that."

  Skiouros nodded hurriedly like a drowning man who sees a rope tossed from the shore.

  "Firstly," Parmenio said calmly, "I want to know what it is you're running from. See I'm not daft. You may not be made up like a Turk any more, but you've been desperate to get away from the city, and that makes me twitchy. I don't like the idea of trouble following you to my door."

  Skiouros sighed and sagged a little. Well, he'd given up the thieving and he'd said he'd give up the lying too when he arrived.

  "In truth?"

  "In truth."

  "In truth, I was wanted in the city, but for something I hadn't done. The danger's passed now, as the bastards who were after me died in the storm. To be absolutely honest, I'm not really sure what I'm planning to do next, but in the long-term I'm not running away. I'm running towards."

  Parmenio's eyes rose to meet the purser's behind him and some strange look passed between them. Finally, the captain nodded.

  "And the other thing is: why, if you have nothing to hide now, did you sneak aboard as a monk when you have enough money to buy passage? You told me you had plenty when we first met, and the monks may not have noticed your rattling, bulging purse on the journey, but it caught the attention of more than one of my crew."

  Skiouros drew himself up straight.

  "That, I'm afraid, is something a little personal and close to my heart, and of which I would rather not speak. Were I to pay you for the passage now, would your curiosity perhaps wane a little, captain?"

  Parmenio's face hardened for just a moment and then cracked into a smile.

  "Give me the fare and get going, lad. I've business to attend to. But no matter who you speak to, you were never aboard the Isabella. And I've never seen or heard of you."

  Skiouros nodded wearily and withdrew his purse, rummaging in it until he'd produced enough ducats to pay for the crossing. Finally, he fastened it again and dropped it back inside his robe, handing over the small
pile of coins.

  "Thank you, captain. May God smile upon your ship and your voyages."

  "And may he look the other way where you're concerned" Parmenio countered with a sly smile. Nicolo gave him a quick, light slap across the back of the head and stepped away.

  With a last, nervous smile at the two sailors, Skiouros turned and hurried down the plank to the jetty.

  Crete, at last. Now where would an ex-thief with a monk's robe and a bag of miscellaneous coinage find a bite to eat?

  As the young man passed the port warehouses, shrugging out of the black robe, he whistled an old Greek tune - a favourite of Nikos the farmer and his elder son, Lykaion. Turning the corner to the city proper, he smiled with relief as he cast the robe, cowl and hat aside into the shadows at the lee of a large building.

  The old Romani beggar reached up and grasped the crumpled garment that had landed in his lap, turning it over and examining it. A priest's robe.

  Fascinating!

  Running his wizened brown hands through his wild, long, black hair and causing the bones to click and rattle, he rose and limped off towards the city in the wake of the young man.

  END

  Author's Historical Note

  The Thief's Tale was born of three factors. Firstly, the 'beloved rut' in which I find myself. I love the Roman era and am more than happy writing novels set within it until the vacca come home, but occasionally I feel the need to write something different, even just as a palate-cleanser. If this book had not been what it is, it would have been some other non-Roman work. Yet, the novel is still in semi-familiar worlds. The Constantinople (or Istanbul) of 1490 is still echoing the world of the Byzantine Empire, which in itself is the last great flowering of Rome. And so, while very different from my standard milieu, it is also close enough to hold that same fascination.

  Secondly, my love of the city. A few years ago, before our kids arrived, my wife and I went to Istanbul for a week. Most tourists, it appears, visit some 5-10 great, world heritage sites and are sated. Not us. We walked the backstreets in search of the fragmentary remains of churches centuries-gone. We walked the circuit of the walls - in my wife's case with feverish sunstroke! We visited everything we could find of historical Istanbul. I now know of many other sites which will help fill my next visit, but I feel as familiar with any inch of that city as I do with other cities in which I have spent more time. We turned it inside out in a week, and it was the city we discovered beneath the skin of tourism that I have tried to put across.

  Thirdly: I found a single event. The final events in this (mostly fictitious novel) might seem somewhat farfetched, and yet they are the most true. The lightning strike in that great storm that detonated the Nea Ekklasia powder house that year is not well recorded. You will not hear it spoken of or see it in any general history, but if you delve into the world of early Ottoman Istanbul, you will find it referenced. That simple explosion - which is noted historically as having dropped blocks of masonry even on the far side of the Bosphorus! - is the linchpin around which I built my plot.

  Skiouros and Lykaion are fictitious. So are Ben Isaac, Bin Murad, Qaashiq and the Cretans. The story is a tale of a fictional assassination attempt by fictional conspirators foiled by fictional heroes. It is, after all, historical fiction. But the civil war between the brothers Bayezid II and Cem Sultan is real enough, as is the war with the Mamluks. Bayezid paid the Pope a small fortune on an annual basis to keep Cem in custody. I would elaborate further but for fear of ruining sequels. The events revolve around real people as well as fictional, and real circumstances. It is a view of what might have happened.

  As a quick note on architecture and dress, this is - for me at least - one of the most complicated times and places to research and write. The world of this tale is still very much a Byzantine one, and the Ottomans, while now flooding the city, had only been there a few decades. There were surprisingly few mosques and a lot of churches. Istanbul at this point is the ultimate melting pot, bringing the architecture and culture, dress and religion of Asia and the east into a meshing contact with the medieval/late-Roman culture of the west. As such, Turkish jackets and trousers are in as much evidence as Italian doublets and braes. Istanbul is treated as having mostly wooden housing, which it would have done during both the late Byzantine and early Ottoman eras, and fires have always been the plague of the city.

  I have similarly used a variety of naming conventions, often trying to tailor it to the point of view of the narrative. The Greek inhabitants almost certainly still called the city Constantinople long after its fall to Mehmet the Conqueror, while to many it was already Istanbul. Hadrianopolis became Adrianople, which then became Edirne. I have homogenised the first two to make it Hadrianople for the reader's ease, denoting its solid Latin and Greek roots. I have used Bosporos for Bosphorus, and yet the Turkish Aya Sofya for the great church of Justinian. Essentially, I went with what seemed appropriate at the juncture. I hope it read well for you.

  The story was never intended to have a sequel but, as often happens to me, I was almost constantly battered with inspiration as I wrote and the arc for a second and third book fell into place before I was even half way through this one.

  I hope Skiouros has entertained you. Feel free to drop me a line and discuss the book or anything about the late Byzantine or early Ottoman world if you so wish. Details are on my website.

  For now, thank you for reading and Skiouros will return in The Priest's Tale.

  Simon Turney. January 2013

  If you liked this title, why not try other books by S.J.A. Turney

  Interregnum

  (2009) *

  For twenty years civil war has torn the empire apart; the imperial line extinguished as the mad Emperor Quintus burned in his palace, betrayed by his greatest general. Against a background of war, decay, poverty and violence, men who once served in the proud imperial army now fight as mercenaries, hiring themselves to the greediest lords. On a hopeless battlefield that same general, now a mercenary captain tortured by the events of his past, stumbles across hope in the form of a young man begging for help. Kiva is forced to face more than his dark past as he struggles to put his life and the very empire back together. The last scion of the imperial line will change Kiva forever.

  Marius’ Mules: The Invasion of Gaul

  (2009) *

  It is 58 BC and the mighty Tenth Legion, camped in Northern Italy, prepares for the arrival of the most notorious general in Roman history: Julius Caesar. Marcus Falerius Fronto, commander of the Tenth is a career soldier and long-time companion of Caesar's. Despite his desire for the simplicity of the military life, he cannot help but be drawn into intrigue and politics as Caesar engineers a motive to invade the lands of Gaul. Fronto is about to discover that politics can be as dangerous as battle, that old enemies can be trusted more than new friends, and that standing close to such a shining figure as Caesar, the most ethical of men risk being burned.

  * Sequels in both series also available now.