by Harold Lamb
The Venetian stumbled to his feet, gazed, and swore roundly.
“Saint Anthony of Padua! I like it not.”
He strode to the break of the stern castle.
“Ho, there! Cressets! Women into the stern! Out with your swords, messers. There be pirates at hand or I am a blind man!”
The gamesters sprang up. Men of the crew ran to fix torches in place at the ship’s side; fagots contained in steel baskets were kindled at bow and stern. The women, wailing and crying, were driven below decks.
“Captain,” suggested Michael, “it would be well to man the sweeps and get the galliot well under weigh. Your sloping sides are comfortably devised for boarders. Our safety lies in ramming the galley with our wooden beak, such as it is.”
The Venetian, experienced in such matters, saw the wisdom of this and was giving orders for the rowers to push out the great oars, when a tall figure appeared on the balcony below the steering-platform and silenced him.
“Nay. No time for that. Summon up your oarsmen to fight on deck.”
Michael, leaning down, saw that it was Rudolfo who spoke. The condottiere had drawn his sword and was giving swift instructions to his own men who tumbled up, pulling mail hoods about their heads and stringing their bows.
“You hear me, fool!” Rudolfo cried at the Venetian. “I am in command of the armed forces of this cursed galliot. By the rood—”
The captain shrugged, glanced at the oncoming galley—now not a dozen ships’ lengths away—and complied. The crew hurried to the danger point at the ship’s side, shepherded by Rudolfo, while the Nauplia barely moved through the water, for the wind was light.
Young Mocenigo reeled upon deck, more than a little the worse for wine. Michael saw Soranzi peer from a cabin and straightway vanish.
The brazen sound of the ship’s bell voiced a warning to all who still slept. From the dark huddle of Muscovites and Armenians emerged men with bows—Oriental traders, well able to fight in a crisis. On the waist of the Nauplia tumult reigned.
Glancing up at the sail, the Venetian skipper whispered to Michael: “Let the gallants do as they please. By Saint Anthony, I’ll keep our bow against the other craft.”
Michael took his stand beside Rudolfo. The condottiere was a brilliant figure in the ruddy light of the torches, his silver-inlaid helmet glittering, his crimson mantle flung back from his mailed chest. He ceased his directions to his men long enough to look swiftly at the Breton and his teeth shone at his beard.
“By the rood, messer, you stand behind me? I see you love not the front line of battle.”
Now Michael wore no armor under his jerkin and mere prudence had dictated that he shelter himself behind the high rail as long as possible to escape the first arrow flights of the pirates, until they should board.
“As you wish, signor.”
He pulled himself up into one of the platforms fashioned for archers to stand on. Rudolfo moved slightly away and Michael smiled at the inbred suspicion that took the condottiere beyond his reach.
But the arrows from the galley rattled high against the mast and tore through the great square of the sail that bellied and flapped as the Venetian skipper came about to present his bow to the pirate craft.
Rudolfo’s half-dozen archers plied their long bows with disciplined precision.
“Saint Mark and Rudolfo!” Their shout went over the water to the galley. Answering cries identified the attackers as Turks and Greeks.
“Dogs!” snarled young Mocenigo. “The Lion of Saint Mark! Ha—do you like his claws?”
He seized one of the cressets by its supports and cast it out upon the deck of the galley as that craft moved past—the maneuver of the Venetian skipper having kept the galley from striking the side of the pilgrim ship with its bow.
For a moment there was a pandemonium of shouts, cries of anger and pain and the flicker of javelins and arrows. The archers of Rudolfo, bearing long leather shields in front of them on their left arms, escaped injury, but Michael saw a pilgrim or two fall writhing to the deck.
Then the galley was past its prey and turning slowly—one bank of oars plying.
“Pando!” called the Nauplia’s skipper. “About!” He pushed the two steering sweeps over and the galliot swung slowly into the offshore tack on which it had been when the pirates were sighted.
Only one more attempt the galley made to close, and the motley defenders of the pilgrim ship were lining the other rail when something whizzed past Michael from behind and stuck into the wooden planking between him and Rudolfo.
The Breton glanced around and saw only the confusion of undisciplined men taking up new positions. Then he drew the knife from the rail.
“A pretty present,” laughed the condottiere. “For you or me?”
The knife was a long, heavy blade, its bronze hilt richly inlaid with silver. Michael thrust it into his belt and observed that the galley was drawing off, followed by the taunting shouts of the Venetians.
“They have small stomach for a fight,” he muttered.
“Thanks to God and our good friend Pietro Rudolfo.” Clavijo’s bull voice filled the ship. “Come, Master Bearn, I do not see that you were any too forward in the affray. Doubtless your skin is tender and you hang back lest it be pricked.”
Now Michael had not seen Clavijo at all along the embattled rail of the galliot and he strongly suspected that the man had remained in his cabin until the pirates had drawn off. Then a stronger suspicion assailed him, and he touched the knife in his girdle.
“Aye,” he assented seriously, “the skin is very tender—upon my back, and this poniard is both heavy and sharp. It was cast at me from behind.”
He held it up by the point before the eyes of the Spaniard, who blinked and pulled at his long beard. Rudolfo took it, glanced it over, looked searchingly at Clavijo from under his thick brows, and tossed it over the side of the vessel.
“Some sailor’s blade,” he shrugged, “and doubtless meant for my kidneys. I am not over popular with the seamen of the Nauplia, because, verily, I enforce discipline upon occasion.”
It was a long speech for the taciturn condottiere to make. Michael would have chosen to keep the dagger, in hopes of learning who its owner was. Yet, as Rudolfo said, it might well have been intended for him.
“Hark ye, Messer Clavijo.” The Breton folded his arms. “Neither master of this vessel nor leader of your men-at-arms am I. The Maritime Council engaged me to aid you to navigate unknown waters if need be, and to arrange transport upon land. This will I do, so well as I may. Methinks the time may come when you will have need of my services.”
He was looking at Clavijo, but Rudolfo spoke.
“As a slave, Master Bearn? It is said that you sleep alone in your cloak, so that no other may see the marks of a whip upon your shoulders.”
So saying, he stepped back, laying hand lightly on the hilt of his sword. Michael Bearn drew a long breath, but his left hand—that Rudolfo, having learned his lesson once, was watching—reached up to the clasp of his mantle instead of to his weapon.
The cloak fell to the deck, and Michael’s muscular fingers ripped open the collar of his jerkin, drawing it down over his bare shoulder. Both Clavijo and Rudolfo saw the deep red welt of scars.
“Aye,” nodded Michael, “there be the marks of a Turkish scourge.”
At this Clavijo started and a curiously intent frown passed over his smooth brow. He eyed the Breton’s square, hard face and wiry, gray-black hair as if seeing him for the first time.
“Moreover,” went on Michael tranquilly, “signori, you will note that my right arm hangs useless. It was broken by those same servants of the sultan. Perhaps this is why I have no longer any love for fighting when there is no need—”
“But surely, Master Bearn,” smiled Clavijo ironically, “there was need to repel these pirates, who would have made short matter of us otherwise.”
Michael laughed. The attack by the small galley had had in it more bark than bite, and
once it was clear to their enemies that the pilgrim ship was not to be surprised, the Turks and Greeks seemed to lose heart. Such an affair bore little resemblance to the grim struggles Michael Bearn had shared in, along the frontier of the Orient.
“You laugh, signor?” Rudolfo’s voice was heavy with insult. “Perhaps you would relish another scourging?”
The dark blood flooded into the young Breton’s face. Around the three a circle of Rudolfo’s men and sailors had gathered, scenting a quarrel. The gleam of torches lighted the scene. He wondered if the others had expected the condottiere to challenge him.
Rudolfo was not the man to be forced into a fight that he had not anticipated beforehand.
And then Michael heard an exclamation from one of the seamen. A strange whirring filled the air. Shrill squawking resounded on all sides.
One of the torches was knocked to the deck by a fluttering, animated ball that leaped and bounded among the men. The deck of the Nauplia in a moment was full of poultry. Hens, roosters, ducks and guinea fowl dashed about underfoot and overhead.
“Ten thousand devils!” Rudolfo struck viciously at a fat pullet that collided with his face. The spectators, the tensity of the quarrel broken in a flash, started running about, clutching at the flying meat.
It was each man for himself and the best dinner to the quickest. The torches were soon darting into every quarter of the deck, leaving Michael in semi-darkness. Clavijo was leading the angry Rudolfo away.
A grotesque figure rose from the deck at Michael’s elbow—a misshapen, stained and grimacing form clad in striped raiment.
“Master,” cried Bembo, “the field is mine. My light cavalry, released by a purloined key from their storage prison, have scattered our foes. Come, good master, let us make good our retreat!”
In the shadows of the bow Michael sat down on his bundle and laughed, more than a little provoked.
“A fair night, cousin mine,” chattered the jester, taking this as a good omen. “Give me thanks for carrying you bodily away from the demons o’ the sea. Black Rudolfo would ha’ cast you overside as easily as I could suck an egg. Marry—the sight of eggs turns my belly for I lived upon them, hidden in the hold with the fowls for three days and two nights. Then, not an hour since I was awakened by a shouting as of the foul fiend, whereupon the roosters crowed, thinking it was day. Master, a soldier crawled into my castle, in the dark, and I thought the pirates held the ship and I was to be ripped open without the services of a confessor. Pompa mortis! Oh, the trappings of death!”
Bembo shivered and looked around anxiously at the tranquil moonlit sea.
“But, forsooth, the big soldier thrust his thatch through the window of the hold and bawled to the other vessel to stand off, that the plan had been changed, and it was useless to attack the galliot. A brave lad, thought I, to bid the pirates mend their ways and be gone. Verily he was a potent bully, for the miscreants gave back and left us in peace. So I—being sorely athirst from fear and hen’s feathers and bad eggs—I climbed to the roof o’ this house and saw Rudolfo about to spit you, whereupon I ran back for my winged allies.”
“Was the man you saw in armor?”
“Armor, quoth’a, verily so. When his face was i’ the window I saw a steel cap as big as a bucket. Master, chide me not for coming. Nay, no voyage that was ever brewed could make me leave the good man who shared his wine and meat wi’ me; nor would my curiosity leave me in peace until I learned wherein this voyage differed from other voyages, as you said.”
Michael arranged his pack for a pillow and laid his sword close to his left hand. The jester blinked at him from shrewd little eyes, the great head turned to one side, like a dog’s, questioningly.
“A ship, Bembo,” murmured the Breton, his eyes closed, “a harmless pilgrim galliot, beats off an attack by well-armed raiders because—a soldier calls secretly to the foe from below decks. One of Rudolfo’s men. A dagger is thrown from behind the mast. Feed your curiosity with that and let me sleep.”
It was a leaner and dirtier throng that lined the rail of the Nauplia when that good galliot entered the dark waters of the Golden Horn and anchored off the crowded shore of Constantinople after the storms of the Aegean that followed the attack by the pirates.
And when Clavijo and his party re-embarked for Pera and the Black Sea in a small Venetian trading-galley, Mocenigo was no longer with them. The young count, Clavijo explained to Bearn, had found paradise enough in the Hippodrome and palaces of the emperor, and women to his liking. The departure of the others had been hurried by the insults of Moslem warriors who thronged the water-front.
Michael said nothing but sought out Bembo, who was sitting on a chest on the jetty, eyeing the preparations for departure.
“The first of us has fallen by the wayside, Bembo,” he observed gravely. He had been apprehensive about the jester since Bembo bobbed up as a stowaway, but had not reproved him. “Will you not follow his example and remain here?”
“I would see the Grand Cham.”
Michael looked at him and laughed.
“You will never see the Grand Cham.”
“Well—” Bembo was surprised—“you must know, master, for you have traveled near Cathay. I would see the city and the gold palaces—”
“There is no city.”
“Master? You have heard Clav—”
“Clavijo—” Michael’s smile broadened into a wide grin—“Messer Ruy de Gonzales Clavijo is the greatest liar in Christendom.”
Bembo gaped and glanced from the ship to the stores on the jetty and at the Breton as if doubting his senses.
“Clavijo, my good Bembo, is a man with one talent. Aye—a tongue. The sun never shone upon a greater liar. What he did not pick up at the water-front of Genoa and Venice he heard related of the traveling monks. When that failed him he had his tongue, and wit to match. It made his fortune in Venice. Until the council took him at his own value, forsooth, and sent him to find the city that is a lie.”
Michael chuckled at the memory. “When Clavijo by his own testimony was in Cathay I saw him among a throng of camp followers, fleeing along the Danube.”
At this Bembo scratched his head vigorously. Then his eyes lighted and he leaped from the chest.
“Aye, master. Well, then, since this is a quest of folly, who should be the leader but a fool?”
When the galley cleared the Horn Bembo stood beside the helmsman, a wooden sword stuck in his ragged girdle, his twisted legs planted wide, and his bearing as important as that of an admiral of the Venetian fleet.
And when, a month later, the party of explorers rode inland from Trebizond, Bembo took his place at the head of the column, mounted on a caparisoned mule.
“On, into terra incognita!” he cried, waving his wooden sword valiantly.
In fact Trebizond was the boundary of what we now call Europe. It was the eastern door of the fading Byzantine Empire, the last trade port of the Serene Republic of Venice, which had its bailio stationed in an arsenal on shore. The walled city, rising on rocks from this shore, was the home of Manuel the Second, almost the last of the Comneni line emperors of Trebizond for generations.
Now they were bound, as Bembo had stated, into unknown territory—into blank spaces on Venetian maps. No one in Trebizond had been anxious to accompany them for it was known that the mountains to the south and east as far as the Salt Sea were occupied by tribes who paid tribute to a monarch of Tatary.
Soranzi and others of the party had taken this information as a good augury and were in high spirits. So also was Bembo.
“Come, my flock!” He jangled the bells on his hood. “Follow your bell-wether. Ply your spurs, sound the timbrels! A fool is your leader, and folly your guide. Ride, my cousins in folly, and—take him who first draws rein!”
Journeying to the southeast, they entered bare brown plains and passes that wound among stunted, rocky hills where the valleys were yet snow-coated and the air was chill. For the first time the voyagers were alone in a stran
ge land. And stranger than the aspect of the country where isolated shepherds ran away at their approach and the inns were no more than walled spaces, where the animals could be picketed and fires lighted—stranger than this was the castle without doors.
The highway they had been following was no more than a trail from valley to valley. The castle overlooked this path from a barren cliffside up which wound a well-defined way cut in the rock.
Half-way up the ramp, as the travelers termed the road, they were halted by a ragged man on a shaggy pony who called to them harshly. Clavijo appeared to meditate on the meaning of the horseman’s words, then shook his head. Michael, however, interpreted.
“The man is an Armenian. He says we are in the land of his lord and must pay the customary tribute. It would be best to do so.”
Soranzi, who handled the expenditures of the expedition, demurred, and the rider retired, bidding them stay where they were. Presently a thin man clad in leathers and furs appeared in the roadway, followed by thirty or more even more ragged horsemen armed with bows.
At this Rudolfo swore and began to muster his mailed men-at-arms to the front of the column, when Michael checked him.
“This rider declares that he is lord of the castle, although he does not dare occupy it owing to the attacks of the Turks who are in the habit of raiding the country from the sultanate to the south. He says that he is very poor and a Christian—which, forsooth, is but half true—and needs money to carry on his fighting. What will you give him, Messer Soranzi?”
The merchant scowled, for besides the presents destined for the Grand Cham the only other goods in the caravan were his own large stock in trade from which he expected a profit of several hundred percent at the least.
“Tell the Moor,” he commanded, “that we be merchants seeking the court of the Grand Cham. Travelers do not pay tribute at castles of the Grand Cham.”
Michael grinned and spoke with the Armenian chief, who frowned in turn and responded testily.
“He says,” announced the Breton, “that he knows naught of any Grand Cham or Khan except himself and the Turkish sultans and that if we are to travel in his land we must make him a present.”