The Romani shrugged. ‘You’re not the first person to level that accusation. You probably won’t be the last.’ And whistling a strangely discordant ditty, the Romani sailor walked around behind the gun, tipping it back and opening another box that contained wadding, powder flasks and other artillery accoutrements. Accompanied by the happy tune, he began to load the abus gun, shoving the components down the barrel.
The foreigner – a Spaniard by the accent – shuffled a step closer to Sincabı. His eyes were truly haunted – clearly uneasy with what he was doing. Sincabı latched on to that look with desperate hope. Perhaps this man might be his chance at escape? He opened his mouth to speak, but the Spaniard shook his head slightly.
‘Shhh. Don’t make him do this. For the love of Christ, don’t force this. Give me the name.’
‘If you don’t want him to do it,’ Sincabı whispered, ‘then you could stop him.’
‘I don’t like this, but I’m no fool, Turk. I’ll not let these people kill innocents or good Christians over your little war, but you’re hardly an innocent. The gates of heaven would never open for you, and hell awaits your stinking behind. But it should be God that punishes you, not Dragi over there. Give me the name. I might be able to persuade him to let you live…’
Sincabı narrowed his eyes. The Spaniard seemed to be genuinely unhappy with what was going on, yet he seemed equally determined to go through with it. Odd.
‘Have you any idea what that gun will do to you,’ the man said quietly.
‘Kill me. And the name will die with me.’
‘It will not just kill you, man. It will obliterate you. Back in ’81 I was at Zahara de la Sierra when the Emir of Granada broke the truce and took the place. I saw a small artillery piece perhaps an inch wider than this go off and saw what happened to the man it hit at close range. He had to be gathered up by three different men in order to find enough of him to bury.’
Sincabı-Paşa shuddered – not at the image this created, but at the matter-of-fact tone of the Spaniard’s voice, as though he were giving a lecture on mining or some such mundanity.
‘He will not do it,’ he replied, though still quivering. ‘I know the Romani. They are cunning, not impulsive or stupid. He knows that to kill me is to remove all hope of learning his quarry’s name. And having lived the life of a beggar – beaten and torn – you would be surprised at how resistant to pain I am.’
The Spaniard shook his head, and that open sincerity was still there. ‘Don’t underestimate Dragi, Paşa. I’ve seen him do the most unbelievable – and unacceptable – things. If he says he will do it, believe that he will.’
He stopped talking, and the silence was filled with a thudding noise as Dragi rammed the barrel’s contents home and shortened the tripod’s legs considerably so that the gun pointed directly at the paşa’s torso, all the time accompanied by a jolly old lullaby tune.
‘And if you’re unlikely to respond to torture,’ the Spaniard went on, ‘then threat is all he has left. It is a wicked thing to kill a man in such a way. Face to face, with a sword against an armed opponent, that I can live with. This…’
Sincabı-Paşa blinked as the man rose to his feet, made the sign of a cross over him, and turned away.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have no interest in watching this.’
Panic crept across Sincabı as he finally began to believe that this might actually happen. Would the Romani really kill him? Clearly the Spaniard thought so. He tried to speak but only a throaty rasp emerged. A second try came out hoarse but audible.
‘If you fire that, half the shipyard will hear.’
The Romani chuckled. ‘If you believe that, you’ve never fired an abus gun. I have done so a number of times aboard a kadirga. They are quite loud, but the hull of this ship will deaden much of the sound. In the shed outside there are men hammering and sawing. They might hear it over the noise they are making, but they are at the other end of the building and I doubt they would recognise the muted thud for a gun shot. Besides, they will not risk disturbing a paşa for the sake of their own curiosity. And no one outside the dry-dock will hear over their noise.’
He lifted one of the iron balls from the box, weighed it in his hand, examined it to make sure there were no imperfections in the sphere that could jam in the barrel, and then rolled it into the end of the gun. He came to the end of his lullaby, rather ominously, as he added the final wadding to the barrel and gave it two prods home with the rammer before standing back.
‘I am, as you understand, rather short on time, and I have little patience for dithering, so I’m going to ask you just once more: who is the man you have in the Tekfur?’
Sincabı quailed. One part of him simply could not believe that this man would fire the gun. To do so would kill him, and that would defeat the purpose of all this. But another part of him had seen the genuine disgust and belief in the Spaniard’s face and it was that part that was making his knees shake uncontrollably even though he was seated.
He tried to imagine what would happen if the gun went off. He would die… wouldn’t he? He had a sudden, very unpleasant image of the iron ball passing through his gut without touching his spine or any vital organ, leaving him very much alive and in agony with a three inch hole through his middle. His panic increased again to an almost unbearable level.
‘Wait…’
‘A name. A genuine one.’
Sincabı felt his bladder and bowel both trying to lose their contents. Whatever he understood, it seemed that his body believed the gun could go off.
‘Musa,’ he blurted, and then stared at his own leaking nethers in surprise. Before he could decide whether giving the name was a good idea, he found himself elucidating on it without further consideration. ‘Musa bin Ramazan’
The Romani nodded. ‘Problem is: you’ve lied to us about the name once already, and I don’t believe you. That look on your face is pure deception and calculation.’
Sincabı-Paşa stared in horror as the Romani lit a small taper and approached the gun, tipping the fine priming-powder into the touch hole.
‘No. I told you the truth.’
The paşa began to struggle for the first time, the ropes that bound him rubbing his wrists raw as he tried to wriggle out of them and move out of the line of fire. He was no longer under any illusion that the Romani would do as he had threatened.
‘If only I could believe that,’ the sailor said, lowering the taper to the touch hole and then stepping off to the side and holding the gun steady. The recoil on these things could be quite impressive. His knuckles whitened as he gripped tight. The powder-soaked fuse in the hole hissed, and the Romani took a deep breath, closing his eyes.
‘It is,’ babbled Sincabı-Paşa. ‘It is Musa. It is Musa bin Ramazan. He is Selim’s turban wrapper!’ The fuse burned down into the hole. ‘I’m telling you the truuuuuuuuth!’ he wailed.
As Sincabı winced and tried to withdraw into himself, there was a faint pop from the gun. The Romani opened his eyes and released his grip, allowing the barrel to drop an inch or so. He gave it a light tap and there was a metallic hollow noise as the iron ball rolled out and clonked to the timber deck, rolling off down the faint slope, leaving a small piece of wadding beneath the weapon.
The paşa stared.
‘An Abus gun, like a cannon, needs both fine priming powder in the touch hole and a wad of proper powder in the barrel. Without the latter, not much happens.’ He gestured to the pile of powder-packs on the floor.
Sincabı-Paşa stared in disbelief. ‘You…’
The Romani turned to the darkness from which the Spaniard re-emerged with a smile.
‘What do you think?’
‘Absolute truth,’ the Spaniard replied. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘You… y… y…’ Sincabı stuttered, staring at the Spaniard.
‘I can be every bit as convincing as you, my dear paşa,’ the foreigner smiled.
‘His turban wrapper,’ the Romani
mused. ‘He would be in an excellent position. It makes sense.’ He stretched. ‘I think our friends outside have stopped their hammering. Good. Diego, could you check for me?’
As the Spaniard strode off towards the steps leading up to the main deck, the Romani strolled over and looked down at his captive. ‘Well played, but just not quite good enough, eh?’
‘You bastard,’ hissed the paşa, then a thought struck him. He could still win this! If the workers out there had stopped their hammering and sawing, they might hear him now. Swishing the saliva around his dry mouth to prevent a repeat of his hoarseness, he opened his mouth to speak, and was astonished to discover that all that emerged was a faint whistle of air and some sort of tinny-tasting froth.
The pain only struck him as he saw the Romani step back and wipe his crimson surgeon’s blade with a piece of gun-wadding. Sincabı-Paşa stared in horror at his killer, trying to curse him to God and the prophet, and to rattle out execrations, but all that emerged was more of that strange whistling from the new mouth beneath his chin and bloody froth from both there and his old mouth. His clothes were beginning to cling to him with the sheets of blood cascading from his neck.
‘I would have preferred not to do that, Sincabı-Paşa, but expediency has its own demands, and there was more than a faint chance that the workers would hear you shout.’
Sincabı tried to move, but it seemed his strength was ebbing with his blood.
‘I’m afraid that there is no viziership in your future, Sincabı-Paşa. But be consoled with the knowledge that while you die here, your name will go on.’
Sincabı-paşa tried to lift a leg from the murk that was a growing pool of mixed blood, urine and faeces, but his leg was cold and numb and heavy as lead. With a sigh of regret, he passed from the world.
*
Diego de Teba dropped the last few steps down the stairs and wandered over. ‘They’ve finished and gone to…’ He paused and stared. ‘What happened?’
‘Sincabı-Paşa has gone to whichever realm awaits him.’
‘I thought we weren’t going to kill him?’ Diego snapped angrily.
‘I said I wasn’t going to kill him with the gun. You really should listen to the details.’
‘But why?’
‘Because he tried to shout out an alarm and we are still far from out of danger. Because if we let him live he would come back to cause us trouble at some point very soon. Because even on a moral level, the runt deserved to die. Pick a reason. I have more.’
As Dragi tucked his knife away into his belt he straightened. ‘Don’t let your squeamishness get the better of you, Diego.’
‘Simple Christian mercy is not squeamishness.’
‘And I am not a Christian, de Teba. I am a practical man with practical solutions. And on that note, we need to dispose of the bodies.’
‘Where?’
‘Into the Golden Horn. We have a ramp to the water, plenty of rope and lots of ballast we can tie to them. And as long as the bodies are stripped they will not be recognisable for who they are.’ As he talked, Dragi strode aft once more, Diego hurrying to keep up. ‘We can take their blades and clothes with us, and there will be no damning evidence of what happened here, barring a little blood and mess, and a bucket of water will soon solve that.’
‘And what happens when they discover their paşa – the man who runs the shipyard – has vanished? A sultan’s favourite? There might be questions.’
Dragi opened the door to the cabin where their fight had taken place with a grin.
‘But Sincabı-Paşa is alive and well. See?’
Diego stared at Skiouros who, now wearing the paşa’s clothes with the two small sword cuts neatly stitched by a sailor’s expert hand, could almost have been Sincabı-Paşa had he not known otherwise. Skiouros had been adjusting the outfit and settling himself into it while Parmenio had stripped the weapons from the dead men. Dragi glanced around the room.
‘Good. When I leave here in my true capacity as a newly-commissioned Reis of the Ottoman navy accompanying the shipyard’s paşa, you two will need to keep your faces hidden. Parmenio, are you alright to walk?’
The Genoese sailor nodded. ‘Getting weak, but I’ve bandaged myself quite tight. I’ll make it back to the city.’
‘Good. You are the closest here to the big bear one’s build, so you take his clothes, and grab one of those helmets with the mail aventail – that will keep your features hidden. Diego, you can choose any of the others, but you’ll have to carry the paşa’s standard when we leave, since Parmenio clearly cannot. And try and find another helmet that covers your face… unless you’re willing to shave your chin and just wear a moustache? You could almost pass for a Turk then?’
The look on the Spaniard’s face made the chances of that plain, and Dragi smiled. ‘Excellent. We all know what we’re doing. You three make yourself look as much like a paşa and his entourage as possible. I’m going to strip the rest of the bodies and weigh them down so we can deliver them into the deep before we leave. Let’s get to business, my friends.’
*
Skiouros was almost as uncomfortable and nervous as he’d ever been as he strode purposefully towards the gate of the shipyard. Behind him, Diego was muttering unhappily as the paşa’s standard bobbed and dipped with each step, enhanced by the limp he had picked up in the fight, Parmenio’s heavy boot steps clunking along in time, occasionally shuffling as the man tried not to succumb to the wound in his side. Despite a thorough search, it had turned out that none of the dead men – even the bear – had feet the size of Parmenio’s and so he had stayed in his own boots and pulled the ankles of the trousers over the top to hide the worst of their western-appearance.
The only one who seemed remotely at ease was Dragi, who was striding alongside Skiouros, half a pace behind in deference to their relative ranks. He looked perfectly comfortable, his face serious and professional.
‘The Paşa’s apparel sits well on you, Skiouros.’
The young Greek answered with an anxious grunt. Would the gate guards not think this odd? The sailor had arrived an hour or so ago with three strange foreigners, and now was leaving with the paşa instead, who had apparently left most of his men behind. Dragi had shrugged off such concerns, convinced that the horn call they had heard ring out across the shipyard while they were changing had signalled a change of shifts. Skiouros had been less sure, but had to defer to his friend’s knowledge. After all, Dragi was a sailor, and had been to the Galata yards several times since their arrival.
The gates still stood open and, much to Skiouros’ relief, the two men attending them were unfamiliar. Better still, both guards made no attempt even to speak to the four of them, standing back and bowing low in respect for the paşa. In a matter of heartbeats, without issue, the four of them strode out into the wide dusty street that ran along the water’s edge beneath the walls of Galata. Part-ruinous extra-mural houses dotted the route below the heavy fortifications and Skiouros frowned.
‘Shouldn’t your friends be here somewhere?’
‘Keep walking. Don’t look around,’ Dragi replied in a hiss. ‘Something is wrong.’
Diego cleared his throat behind them. ‘He’s right. Something is very wrong. The Romani should be on watch here. They’re hardly going to have gone for a wander. And I’m fairly sure we’re being watched.’
‘I have that feeling too,’ added Parmenio as he winced and stumbled again, quickly righting himself. ‘My spine’s tingling.’
‘This could cause us no end of trouble,’ Skiouros murmured as the four men passed a ripped fishing net that lay on the grass near the water’s edge. His astute gaze picked out the fine spray of blood on both it and the grass. ‘Would it be acceptable for a paşa to run?’
Diego breathed deeply. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. See just ahead? Fifty yards or so?’
They focused on the road ahead and spotted the jetty marching out into the Golden Horn, lined with small rowing boats. The unofficial ferry s
ervice run by enterprising locals with which the Spaniard had crossed the water a few nights earlier.
‘As soon as we get there, you three pile into a boat and make for the other shore. I’m going to stay here and keep others from pursuing you. I shall meet you at ben Isaac’s by nightfall.’ Licking dry lips, he tossed the Paşa’s standard to Dragi.
‘Not ben Isaac’s,’ the Romani said quietly. ‘The time for secrecy is past – tomorrow we move on the palace. Meanwhile our enemies close in around us, and it is no longer fair to put our hosts in any further danger. Instead, we go back to Mustafa’s house in the Blachernae ruins.’
Diego nodded. ‘Then I’ll be there by dark.’
‘You can’t take them on yourself,’ Parmenio breathed shallowly, holding his side again. ‘Whoever they are, they’ve apparently dealt with six tough Romani already.’
Diego patted the purloined swords he wore on each hip. ‘Meaning no affront to Dragi, but now that I’m armed, I’m a more dangerous proposition than six unarmed Romani.’
‘I hope you are right,’ Dragi replied, then gestured to the others and down to the jetty. ‘Good luck, Diego de Teba.’
‘And to you. Have some wine ready when I get back.’
Diego watched three unhappy faces – one largely hidden by mail – turn from him to the water, and placed both hands on the hilts of his swords. He wished they were good, well-balanced Spanish swords and not the strange curved eastern ones, but his level of mastery of the art would grant him a reasonable skill even with unfamiliar blade types, and he was well aware of the theory behind the scimitar’s use.
As the other three hurried along the jetty, paid the owner and clambered into a boat, pushing off out into the water, Dragi rowing as fast as he could manage, Diego turned to the two dilapidated wooden houses below the Galata wall. Though he could see no sign of their pursuers, the narrow alley between the two was deep and dark and connected to a similar lane that ran along below the wall, behind the buildings, and he was certain the watching eyes lay within.
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