Silently he stood there, listening to the rhythmic splash of Dragi’s oars pushing the others further out into the water. After a moment, he lifted the helmet from his head and dropped it to the ground. Feature-obscuring and very protective it might be, but it also seriously restricted the senses.
‘Show yourselves,’ he said, eventually, satisfied that the boat was now beyond reach and out of danger.
There was a pregnant pause, and finally two black-cloaked figures stepped out into the sunshine. One had his hand on the hilt of a sword at his side and the other held a light crossbow, already loaded, the quarrel trained on Diego.
Damn it. He hadn’t counted on a crossbow. He was fast with a sword – faster than almost anyone he’d ever met – but no swordsman in the world was faster than a loaded crossbow.
‘I don’t know how you managed to get Sincabı-Paşa to leave with you, but your time for interfering is over,’ the crossbowman said in a croaky Italian accent. Of course! For a moment, since he’d seen the crossbow, Diego had wondered why the man hadn’t simply shot at them while they walked. But the Hospitallers had no idea that Skiouros was not Sincabı. And for that matter, both he and Parmenio would have been unknown until he’d cast off his helmet just now. Only Dragi looked like himself.
‘There will be no pursuit. I have no wish to pit myself against men of the Church, but I cannot allow you to kill my companions.’
‘Then I’ll have to settle for you instead,’ the crossbowman murmured, straightening and raising his weapon. Another figure emerged from the darkness of the alley and placed a hand over the bow, gently pushing it downwards.
‘Not this one. Not now, anyway.’
Diego stared into the eyes of the Hospitaller he had allowed to escape at the Jew’s house a few days earlier. He nodded his recognition.
‘Consider my debt paid, Spaniard. Go on your way, and know that the next time we meet, my blade will be out.’
Diego nodded again, not taking his eyes from the three black-clad men before him. For quite some time he stood watching the three Hospitallers, the one with the crossbow clearly unhappy at being refused his kill. Several minutes passed and finally Diego looked over his shoulder. His friends’ boat was no longer visible. As he turned back and stood his ground, he watched the knights retreat into the darkness of the alley, their prey gone. Three men. Counting off the knights they had overcome in Balat against the number he had seen in the church, that would seem to be all there were left in the city, apart from the preceptor that one had mentioned, who was likely still at the church within Galata’s walls. And yet he could have sworn that there was at least one more set of eyes watching him, unseen in the darkness. Surely the preceptor would not need to lurk in the shadows, so it had to be someone else.
Heaving in a deeply unhappy sigh, the Spaniard turned and made his way down to the jetty, still certain more eyes were on him as he went. Paying the boatman, he climbed into a vessel. As he slowly and calmly rowed back across the wide waterway, Diego pondered on his situation. It was rapidly becoming untenable. Clearly the next time the knights and he crossed paths there would be no mercy given – nor expected. And despite the threat of combat with them, he intensely disliked even the very idea of raising a blade against a soldier of Christ.
He owed nothing to anyone now. He had paid off his passage on board the Turkish ship several times over. He was not beholden to the Greek, the Romani or the Genoese sailor, though he felt that at least Parmenio – who was as caught up in this as he and without the manipulative element of the others – deserved more. And now that the Hospitallers knew he was not their most avid enemy, they would likely leave him unharmed if he stayed out of the way.
Perhaps he should simply walk away? He had no command of the language of this place, but it was a busy trade hub and vessels from all over the world docked here. Perhaps he could arrange passage on a Venetian trader, or with a Rus? Or an English one, even. He could be out of Constantinople before this damned festival even began.
His thoughts were still in turmoil as his boat slid up to the jetty on the city side of the water and in an effort to calm himself before returning to his friends, he wandered into Phanar and stopped in one of the Greek taverns he had seen there over the past few days. His strange, Turkish mode of dress and the open wearing of swords drew suspicion from the locals, but when he spoke in easy Greek, the tension slowly dissipated and things in the tavern returned to normal. Purchasing a cup and a bottle of wine, he strolled over to a table in the corner and kicked back the chair, dropping heavily into it with a jingle of fine Turkish mail and sword fittings. At least he’d left the ostentatious helm lying in the dust across the river.
Despite his better intentions, Diego found himself once more considering his problems as he poured himself a cup to the brim and began to sip it, ignoring the curious looks he was drawing from the tavern’s clientele.
The Hospitallers.
As a nobleman of a good Catholic line himself – albeit with a darker smudge in his heritage – he was well aware of the uneasy dichotomy of knighthood. Not only was it known for those who were overtly the paragon of chivalry to harbour dark habits and prejudices, in fact it was more or less the norm. Though prior to his arrival in the Ottoman capital he had had little direct contact with the Order – given their lack of land and influence in both southern Spain and Crete – their reputation in the eastern sea was not an overwhelmingly pure one. Merchants in Heraklion feared the marauding galleys of the Hospitallers almost as much as they did the Mamluk and Ottoman vessels.
The Order had a papal mandate to disrupt Muslim shipping in the seas around their home fortress of Rhodos, and that mandate had been unofficially stretched to include Jewish merchants, Greek Orthodox captains and even catholic vessels should their nation be currently out of Papal favour. And it was these prisoners from a plethora of backgrounds who ended up rowing those same Hospitaller galleys on their seaborne crusade. The knight-clerics were ‘good’ Christians. But they were also fanatics. And they had a tendency to be somewhat indiscriminate.
What could have persuaded their grand master to interfere in Ottoman politics?
The answer to that was all too easy to furnish: the pope continued to murmur about the possibility of a new crusade against the Turk, and the Order owed obeisance only to Rome and to God. If there was a chance to drive a breach into the unassailable walls of the Ottoman world and open them up to Rome, the Hospitallers would see it as their duty to take it, with or without papal orders. And given their reputed history of overlooking the religious affiliation of their victims, the actions of the group in Galata seemed perfectly in keeping.
Given that, then, what could be expected of them now? They owed nothing to Diego or the other three, nor to the Jews who had harboured them. There was every chance that the family of ben Isaac would come to a bloody end regardless of Dragi’s decision to move away from them. And no matter their current alliance, the knights would see the Muslim Romani as disposable at best, if not a direct enemy.
Realising he had sat for several minutes with an empty cup, Diego refilled it and sank down the warming, numbing contents gratefully.
In his heart he knew that the knights would not stop trying to complete their task until they were no more. So where did that leave him? He had no wish to take part in indiscriminate butchery in the name of Christ, though in his heart he felt the Hospitallers’ cause to be right, regardless of their methods. Exitus acta probat – the end justified the means, in the words of Ovid. But did it?
Angrily, he drained his second cup and refilled again, surprised to find the bottle empty already. Had he poured and drunk more than he’d noticed? No. Three cups, but clearly larger cups than he’d thought.
A night of sleep on the matter was necessary, he decided. He would think on it tonight, and tomorrow morning he would decide whether to stay and face inevitable ethical difficulties, or whether to head for one of the several city ports and try to book passage away from trouble.
Three large cups of wine had eased the pain in his hastily-bound leg, but had dulled his mental anguish little, despite his decision and, by the time the light was beginning to fade and he was strolling up from the street into the narrow, winding alley that led down to the Romani house in the ancient garden, he was still uncomfortable with each and every option available to him.
Overwhelming his irritations, his skin suddenly prickled and he felt the hairs on his neck rise in alertness. Despite the extra skin of wine that coated him, his senses had kicked in once more as he approached the house, and he knew something was wrong even before he spotted the figures in the shadows.
Two men in peasant dress lurked in the shade of an ancient shattered arch, both armed with bows and largely hidden from the house, their backs to the approaching Spaniard. Shrinking back and making sure not to touch the wall in case his mail shushed against the stone, he concentrated on the lengthening shadows of eventide. Other watchers were in evidence here and there. An archer by a broken tree stump on the far side of the hollow in which the shack sat; two swordsmen in the shadows of an overhang that had once been the substructures of a grand building. And there, on the other path from this place, three figures in black.
Damn it.
He had not intended to make his decision so soon, and certainly not under the influence of drink. His troubled eyes turned back to look along the path he’d followed. He could easily be along it and away from this place, leaving them all to their mutual destruction.
He closed his eyes and lowered his head, sending an urgent prayer up to the almighty for guidance, though God’s attention seemed to be settled elsewhere and no insight came.
There was a metallic rustle as his back rubbed on the alley’s low boundary wall. Without realising it, he had inched back, robbed of his spatial awareness by the bottle of wine. He was hardly surprised when the two bowmen in the archway turned at the noise.
Damn you to hell and the pit, Skiouros, he thought viciously, already stepping forward, the swords ripping from the sheaths at his hips. The two archers, only twenty paces from him, fumbled for a moment, trying to draw an arrow from their quivers and bring them to bear and then realising they had no hope of loosing a missile before this strange figure was on them, and trying to draw their swords instead.
Diego, despite his slight fog of wine, pirouetted out of the alleyway dancing a dance of death, his swords blurred and flashing in the evening glow as he spun. Blades ripped into unprotected flesh and both men fell before they could adequately defend themselves, one dead, his neck slashed neatly across, the other crippled and staring in horror at his severed arm.
The curved sword of the Turk. Not a limb-breaker or a fencing, impaling weapon such as Diego was used to, but a slashing razor nightmare. He might not be trained with one, but the theory of their use was not difficult to comprehend. As the two men collapsed to the ground and shouts issued from the other path in Italian, Don Diego de Teba stepped into the wide grassy area, his fine mail whispering with every move.
‘Skiouros! Dragi! Parmenio!’ he bellowed, in case the shouts of the Hospitallers had not been warning enough.
As the garden burst into life, more men than he’d initially spotted – damn that wine – stepping out of the shadows, he turned and made for a tall man in a fur-wrapped turban brandishing a spear. Anything was better than heading the other way and coming up against the Hospitallers. Even now, in the midst of sudden battle, he would rather not be forced to kill them.
Diego hit the grass with a thud and cursed himself for tripping like a wine-addled idiot, but realisation quickly dawned on him and as he rose painfully and looked back, he could see the black-clad crossbowman hurriedly reloading. Agonised, clutching his side, De Teba rose and staggered off to the left, into an area of thick undergrowth close to the house, where he would present much less of a target for the ruthless Hospitaller.
As he sank down into the grass once more, he examined the wound. The bolt was lodged deep in his side at the bottom of his ribcage with little shaft jutting, displaying the flights only. Prodding around, he quickly came to the conclusion that it had passed within and wedged up against his bottom rib. He was not coughing up blood and despite the searing pain he couldn’t see that it had passed through anything important. It was too low for lungs and heart, and had it been his liver, he would already be paling and feeling the effects. Slowly, gritting his teeth, he rose. The worst of the pain seemed to be being caused by the protruding shaft battering against the plates of his armour. He’d seen enough wounds in his time back in Andalucia to know that the worst possible thing to do would be to draw out the shaft, in case the head was barbed and tore him on the way out. He would have to seek proper help. The sounds of battle were now ringing out around the large garden clearing, announcing the emergence of the house’s occupants. There was nothing he could do to help like this, which suited him just fine. He was at least free for now from facing other Christians blade to blade – or even back to bow, he added bitterly.
Painfully, he staggered to the side of the house and shuffled along the wall, hidden from the sounds of carnage by the undergrowth, until he located the rear door he knew to be there. The door was open, thankfully. Three Romani were busy stamping through the undergrowth from it, shouting to each other in their own language, and another man stood by the door with a bow, the arrow nocked ready. He almost released it at Diego before recognition dawned and the man, noting his staggering gait, waved him inside.
In the kitchen beyond, the Spaniard lurched to the table and collapsed, leaning against it and whispering in heavy breaths. He was breathing painfully for a moment, trying to call for someone to fetch him a drink, when the alluring Romani woman who’d been at their various strategy meetings appeared and hurried over to him.
‘You are wounded?’
Diego nodded and pointed to the flights jutting from the mail between the small rectangular plates, now quickly soaking with blood. Without pause, the woman helped him up and began to unlace the armour, calling for someone to aid them. A young man ran in and helped strip the armour and then the clothing from him, and the woman hissed as she peered at the wound, from which gobs of blood emerged with every movement.
‘It is not your liver or kidney,’ the woman said in Greek, and then crouched, examining the wound. She pressed on his bottom rib and Diego screamed. ‘It would have passed straight through had it not hit this rib. It is a bodkin point – very narrow and not barbed, so we will not need the Diokles spoon. The safest method of removal will be drawing it back out through the initial wound. But you will have to be very still, and be prepared for a great deal of pain – we do not have time to mix up a suppressant.’
‘I’ll manage,’ Diego moaned as he was gently settled into position, leaning on the chair back, presenting his side to the woman.
‘Batiya,’ she said quietly, ‘hold him still…’
*
Diego stirred and opened his eyes. Parmenio was sitting nearby, naked to the waist and with his trunk wrapped round liberally with bandages bearing a pink rose of blood at the side, not far from the position of Diego’s own wound. The guttering lamp light was warm and calming, but the moment the Spaniard tried to move, the pain was intense and he quickly gave in and settled back, panting.
‘They’ll give you a nice mixture that deadens it when they know you’re awake. Welcome to the small, but very exclusive, club of gut wounds.’
‘You won out there?’
‘Me?’ Parmenio chuckled, and then clutched his side and winced. ‘No. I didn’t run out to fight at all. I was already bound tight in linen and drugged into a blissful fog. But your warning saved a brutal surprise attack. Dragi and his friends managed to bring down many of them and the few who remained fled into the night. Two of them were Hospitallers, too, but I suspect you already knew that.’ He sighed. ‘Hopefully it will all be over by the end of tomorrow. Dragi and Mustafa are convinced that the opposition will not have time now to put any
thing else into place. It will have taken them a very long time to get trusted people into position.’
All over by the end of tomorrow.
Diego closed his eyes, the memory of his surgery flooding back to him and the words of the woman.
Yes. Yes, it probably would.
Chapter fifteen – Of the Wolf of Trabzon
May 28th – Eve of the festival
THE four friends climbed the gently sloping street towards the wondrous yet strangely-looming complex constructed by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in which the last Byzantine emperor had resided even as Mehmet the conqueror rolled his cannon up to the city wall. Though beautiful almost beyond comparison, there was something brooding and somehow haunted about the place, possibly through the connections with so recently deceased an empire. After all, the ghosts of Byzantium were still visible, and even the very bones of Constantinople still jutted through the new skin of the city.
The entire complex formed an extended rectangle, abutting the great city walls which formed one long axis. To the south, both side walls were occupied by plain, if somewhat dilapidated, residential and ancillary structures, sitting beneath the battlements. And between them stood the main gate into the palace courtyard. A wide staircase led up from the open space full of fruit trees and delicate gardens onto the heavy outer wall, granting access to the upper floors of the palace itself. But the north end of the rectangle was the breath-taking part. There stood the grand, red-brick and white-stone palace itself, with its delicate arcades of windows, its painted shutters and graceful balconies. This building had played host to the Şehzade Selim since he had arrived in the city – a palace fit for the crown prince, but also a fortification as strong as any castle. Its very selection – surely the choice of Selim and not his father – cried out not ‘here is a prince visiting a festival’, but rather ‘here is a prince, untouchable and strong.’
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