‘There’s nothing as suspicious as a cloaked and hooded man. You’ll be a lot less noteworthy without it. Just keep your face lowered so they can’t get a good look at you. Plenty of people have a similar hairstyle.’
The warehouse had been carefully chosen, partially for its proximity to the jetty at which Kemal Reis’ kadirga was moored. Even as they approached they could see that all was ready for tomorrow’s departure. The vessel rode low in the water, weighed down with supplies for the journey. The entire crew would be aboard now, including the great Reis himself and his honour party. Indeed, the raised flag indicated the presence of the ship’s captain. At first light, the great Turkish galley would slide out into the harbour, cutting through the water towards the heart of the Ottoman world, and they would leave Crete.
Just one small obstacle to go.
Along the jetty, Parmenio and Skiouros made sure to move slightly ahead of their friend, keeping him partially hidden behind their shoulders. As they moved, Skiouros looked up at the deck of the ship, its mast freshly painted, its oar holes empty but ready.
‘Halt,’ called a voice in Italian with a local twang, indicating a man born on Crete rather than one of the never-ending stream of Venetian settlers. Skiouros’ eyes strayed along the sheer strake of the kadirga until he picked out the figure he was expecting, and he heaved a sigh of relief.
‘Who goes there?’ demanded the guard.
Without replying, Skiouros waved an arm at the man busy ordering around sailors on the deck, and he called out a stream of Turkish. Dragi moved to the edge of the ship and peered down at the three of them, then nodded and gestured to the guards to let them pass. Between the two friends, Diego kept his gaze carefully lowered as the port guards parted to allow them access to the ship.
A moment later they were climbing the boarding ramp towards the vessel and Skiouros could almost feel the waves of relief emanating from their Spanish friend.
‘That’s it. Say goodbye to Crete, my friend. Next, I shall show you my home.’
With a smile he stepped up onto the ship and smiled.
Istanbul.
Home, at last.
Chapter four – Of the greatest city in the world
The Bosphorus, May 17th
SKIOUROS stood at the gunwale of the kadirga, shading his eyes against the setting sun as the sinking golden orb cast the great city of Constantine into silhouette. The minarets added to the ancient Byzantine churches to turn them into mosques rose like slender spears stabbing at the heavens, surrounded by graceful domes and other great structures. On the wooded, grassy slopes of the south-eastern promontory the sad, neglected ruins of the ancient Roman palace complex rose among more recent Ottoman buildings. Beyond, on the highest point, the new palace of the sultan sprawled like a graceful marble lion in repose.
The young Greek wondered that his heart could contain the emotions he was feeling at the sight of this city in which he had grown to manhood, lost to him these past five years. The urge to leap over the rail and swim for shore was surprisingly strong.
Beside him, Parmenio and Diego watched the headland slip past as the Turkish galley made for the Golden Horn and the Neorion harbour. Parmenio’s expression was unreadable. He had never come here as anything but the captain of his own ship with intent to trade, but the city was at least partially familiar to him. Diego, on the other hand, was staring in fascinated disbelief, as he had been since the massive walled city had first slid into view. Likely it was the largest, most urban sprawl the Spaniard had ever seen. At least it gave Diego something interesting to observe rather than stabbing his bitter gaze at Skiouros as he’d been doing periodically throughout the journey whenever the Greek wasn’t looking.
As the city slipped past, the headland hiding the sun from the water and leaving it an inky purple with myriad tiny jellyfish bobbing around, Skiouros watched the Golden horn approach. His nerves were almost twanging as the vessel began to turn, the oars dipping in perfect time and driving the galley forward like a knife through soft butter, splicing the purple and sending the endless small jellyfish away from the hull in waves.
As the ship made the final turn and came into the Golden Horn, they came to face the setting sun along the water, the burnished copper of the light reflecting off the calm surface and making it abundantly clear how the inlet had acquired its famous name. The glow was almost blinding, and those not bending to their oars had to squint and shade their eyes as they watched the Neorion approaching on their left, one of several harbours before the great sea walls of Istanbul.
‘What city is that?’ Diego asked curiously in heavily-accented and somewhat troubled Greek. The four travellers had discovered that they could converse well enough in Italian, though all had some command of Greek from their time on Crete, and Skiouros’ native tongue would be the least odd to hear among the Turk, so they had settled upon it despite it being Diego’s weakest language. Parmenio and Skiouros turned to see the Spaniard pointing across to their right at the densely-packed structures that sat brooding, regarding the ancient Byzantine capital across the water.
‘That’s still part of the same city,’ Skiouros replied. ‘It’s called Galata. ‘Til the Turks came, it was a Genoese enclave. Now it’s more of an Ottoman business quarter, though it still plays host to some foreign institutions.’
He tried not to register the bitterness that passed involuntarily across Parmenio’s face, given his Genoese nationality, but Diego was already crossing the narrow bow to examine this external neighbourhood of the great city, which still sported its own defensive walls and a tall, imposing tower at the summit.
‘It looks a lot like an Italian city,’ he agreed, noting the belfries and grand Italianate palaces.
‘But what, in the name of the Holy Mother and all the blessed saints, is that?’ Parmenio hissed, and Skiouros frowned, trying to identify what it was to which his friend was referring, his eyes roving across the roofs and towers down to the waterline…
…where he saw it.
‘Dear Lord!’
The great Imperial Ottoman Shipyards sat at the water’s edge, across from the Neorion harbour and a little further along, where Galata’s walls ended – a massive complex of structures, with docks and large hangar-like construction yards. Here agents of the sultan churned out the powerful navy of the Ottoman Empire, which was feared across the eastern Mediterranean.
But what had drawn both Parmenio’s attention and his breath was no mere kadirga or caique of the fleet.
Skiouros stared at the leviathan languishing beneath the shade of the nearest great construction shed, his own breath catching in his throat. He had never seen any galley so large, had never even imagined it. The enormous hulk of a vessel was clearly designed along the same lines as the kadirga upon which they stood, though magnified to be the vessel of titans, with fore- and aft-castles. Still in dry-dock, it even seemed to loom high over those ships passing on the water. He tried to imagine what any Spanish caravel captain would think if he rounded the headland to find that monstrosity awaiting him. It simply didn’t bear thinking about.
He could remember the trouble even the larger kadirga had in keeping steady while firing abus guns or the small cannon sometimes installed aboard. This thing lurking in the shadows of Galata would have no such issue. Skiouros could imagine it bristling with cannon and still sitting steady in the water as they battered a caravel into submission. He wondered briefly whether it could even withstand firing the great city-killer cannon of Mehmet the Conqueror that had shattered the unassailable walls four decades earlier.
He shook his head in wonder.
‘Impressive, is it not?’ asked a quiet, authoritative voice, and Skiouros turned in surprise to see the captain, Kemal Reis, standing by the rail a few feet away with Dragi at his side. The ship’s captain had not addressed Skiouros directly throughout the voyage, so the comment came as something of a shock.
‘It’s unbelievable. Hard to imagine it floats, Reis.’
; The white-bearded old sailor gave a dry chuckle. ‘Her name is Göke. She was commissioned over five years ago, but only now is she almost complete. I have been itching to behold her in all her glory. I saw the designs when I was last here. She will be the largest ship afloat, if I am not mistaken, and certainly the most powerful. She will be the flagship of the fleet and the personal vessel of a senior admiral. I hope to still be in port when she launches, for it will be a sight – of that I am sure.’
The enormous leviathan slid from sight as the kadirga swung around and made for the Neorion harbour’s reaching arms. Numerous other vessels sat at the jetties and beyond them the city rose from the waterline, marching like the advance of time up the city’s Second and Third hills.
The three visitors stood and watched as their vessel moved closer to the jetty and the oars were shipped. Behind them the two other kadirga in Kemal’s fleet made for their own berths, and the emin in control of the Neorion harbour was already stepping out along the jetty, a small army of clerks and officials at his back, while half a dozen janissaries stood guard on the dock. A tall, rangy figure with a thick, neat beard and a voluminous turban lounged close by, one slippered foot up on a crate, his expensively-tailored appearance somewhat at odds with the weathered, worn look of his skin, which suggested a sailor of many years.
As the kadirga bumped to a halt and Kemal waited for the boarding ramp to be run out, the emin of the port bowed low and welcomed the captain back to the city. The janissaries stood at attention and the mysterious sailor pulled himself upright and rose from the pile of boxes upon which he’d reclined, smiling enigmatically at the new arrivals.
‘Once you deal with the bureaucracy,’ Kemal advised Dragi, ‘your time is your own, Cingeneler. I know your people have their own customs and celebrations, and I imagine you wish to visit your family. There will be no new adventures for us until after the festival, and all that is required of you in the intervening days is to check in at the Galata naval headquarters each morning until the situation changes. If I need you, you will know.’
Dragi nodded his understanding and his captain turned to Skiouros and his friends. ‘Welcome to Istanbul. Thank you for causing me no trouble on our journey. Though we have spent these past few years saving refugees and ferrying them east, we have been saving good Muslims and clever Jews from the blight of the Catholic Church’s minions, not saving those very minions. Had Dragi not vouched for you and had I not trusted him implicitly, I would never have endangered my vessel to rescue your infidel behinds. Allah works in strange ways, and I pray that what I have done is by his design. Go with peace. Selamun aleyküm.’
Skiouros frowned, but slid the gesture into a shrug and a wry smile. He could hardly fault the man’s opinion of the western Church, given what he had seen himself these past few seasons. ‘Salām,’ he replied in proper Arabic, with a perfect Turkish accent, raising an equally wry smile from the captain, who bowed respectfully to him and then to the port emin before sweeping on past them to the strange waiting sailor, who stepped forward and embraced him. Dragi nudged Skiouros.
‘His nephew, Piri Reis. He has been harrying the Spanish every bit as much as his uncle and is rapidly making a name for himself. They even say he might become the next high admiral. I will not be surprised if that great ship across the water is given to him.’
As Dragi turned to the emin, lifting his ship’s log and manifest, and began to negotiate the cumbersome business of docking in the city, Skiouros stood and watched the two captains embrace for a moment before allowing his eyes to wander on from them, past the ancient arcaded structure that had coddled the dock since the days the Romans had glorified the city, up the slope towards the neglected hospital of Irene, the seemingly endless red-tiled roofs of the grand bazaar reaching from beyond there to the crest of the hill.
Home.
‘What do we do now?’ Diego murmured at his side and the other two turned to him. ‘I still owe you a scar or two for your trickery,’ he added bitterly, ‘but this place is unknown to me and potentially unfriendly. I will accompany you at least until I have found my feet.’ There was an edge of iron in his voice and though Skiouros was in fact grateful for the Spaniard’s continued presence, he was under no illusion that it was Don Diego’s decision to accompany them, and not his own.
Skiouros huffed in the evening air. ‘I would like to see my old neighbourhood in the Greek enclave. In fact, I would like to see the whole city again. I could spend hours just wandering.’ He reined in his thoughts. ‘I suppose the first matter of importance is to find somewhere to stay in the city. We have a little money left and, if I am honest, which these days I generally am’ – he ignored the dark look from the Spaniard – ‘then I have small deposits of coin secured in hidden places around the city against times of extreme desperation. Or at least, I used to have. They may not still be there. Nothing that would make us wealthy, but enough to buy a few nights’ lodging, at least.’
‘And what of that?’ Parmenio nudged, pointing at the bag down by his feet, hermetically-sealed and knotted tight to prevent the stench of decay from spreading.
‘I will have to find the best place to lay him to rest.’ His mind reached back across the years to the last time he had seen his brother, staring lifeless at him in the torchlight outside a disused monastery. ‘I wonder if the Saint Saviour church has been converted or whether its alterations are still ongoing? I cannot think of a more appropriate place.’
Finally, as they stood musing and peering at the city, Dragi finished dealing with the emin and passed the books over to one of the senior crew, who scuttled off in the company of several others. Skiouros watched them head to one of the numerous small ferries, preparing to take the documents for storage at the naval headquarters across in Galata where the beast, Göke, sat brooding and waiting for release, and then turned back as Dragi spoke.
‘Are you ready, my friends?’
Skiouros nodded. ‘I would like to head into Phanar, and perhaps Balat. And to check on the Saint Saviour church. And we need to find a place to stay. Are you planning to stay with us?’
Dragi gave him a hard look. ‘Do not become so wrapped up in the drama of your sibling’s remains and the culmination of your homesickness that you ignore the grand scheme of things, Skiouros the Greek. Do not forget that there is purpose in all I do. I told you that all matters of import will be revealed to you as soon as the time is right, and that time is near. It is the seventeenth of May, and the hourglass is turning. The next twelve days will change your world and mine.’
‘Very cryptic,’ grumbled Skiouros. ‘You can tell me your folk-tales whenever you like and ruminate on the factions within your people, but for me the prime concern will still be Lykaion’s burial. If the Saint Saviour church has not yet been opened as a mosque, I would like to try and inter my brother there somehow. Given his past, it seems oddly fitting that he be buried in a Christian church that will be given over to Islam, since that very much describes him, too.’
The Romani’s eyes hardened again, and Skiouros felt oddly uncomfortable, as though a beloved pet had just bared its fangs at him. ‘Be under no illusions, Skiouros. You owe me your life twice over, and in return I desire only your cooperation until the festival is over. After that you may do as you wish, but until then, you will follow my instructions.’
Skiouros found that he was involuntarily leaning back away from the man’s tone, and he tried to reply in a light, confident voice. ‘I understand what you’re saying, Dragi, but don’t treat me as a visitor here. I know this city like the back of my own hand.’
Dragi waved his fingers mysteriously, like some prestidigitator, drawing Skiouros’ attention to his hands, and then delivered him a light but shocking slap to the cheek.
‘See how unprepared you are? You do not know this city any more, Skiouros the Greek, no matter how much you think that you do. You have not been here in near half a decade. And for me it has been longer than that. We are not in a position to go romping ar
ound the city without first finding out how the land lies.’
‘He has a point,’ Parmenio urged, and Skiouros ground his teeth to see Diego nodding too. This was his city, and he didn’t relish being treated as a tourist by a man who constantly intimated that danger and trouble lurked in their future. Still, there was no denying that Dragi had saved his life twice now, and no matter how infuriating and obfuscating he might be, Skiouros still owed him a great debt.
‘Alright, Dragi. We’ll do it your way. So what is your way?’
‘We go to my people. There you will find sanctuary, a place to stay and local knowledge of the situation in the city at this time. We will skirt your old neighbourhoods on the way, but at the end you will be where you need to be,’ he added with an enigmatic smile that did little to calm Skiouros. ‘Come,’ the Romani addressed the three of them, and marched along the jetty to the dock.
‘Do we not need to fill in some sort of documentation, or present ourselves to the port bureaucracy or anything,’ Skiouros frowned. ‘The authorities are not commonly so easy-going with arrivals in the city.’
Dragi chuckled.
‘I have registered your disembarkation with the emin, and the details will be logged appropriately. You do not need to be checked or approved in any way. You arrived under escort of a renowned Reis of the empire and have been vouched for by both he and I. Now come.’
Leaving Parmenio and Diego to share a curious glance as they slung their kit bags over their shoulders again, Dragi turned to his right and strode along the dock, parallel to the arcade, heading for the gate that gave access to the city proper, from which the sea walls marched off, bordering the golden waters.
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