Christian Cameron: Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Six: Chios

Now it was Zambale’s turn to look at Swan with admiration.

Swan shrugged in false modesty. It was, after all, the only kind of modesty the Genoese seemed to understand. ‘With the Catholic fleet, we can defeat Omar Reis — indeed, it is my lord’s intention to trap him here.’

‘Christ on the cross, boy! Trap him somewhere else!’ The president’s fist crashed down on his heavy imported desk, and men flinched. Swan could smell more than fish — he could smell their fear on the cool spring night. ‘Who is your lord?’

Swan bowed again. ‘Fra Angelo Domenico is the admiral,’ he said.

‘Sweet Saviour preserve us! We’re caught between Fra Diablo and Satan!’ shouted a merchant.

‘Has not the Genoese Grand Fleet … already departed these waters?’ the president asked.

Zambale stepped forward. ‘A feint,’ he said.

‘We will appear great fools if we surrender the island and the Turks are defeated,’ said an old man.

The president shook his head. ‘The Turks will not be defeated. There is no fleet.’

‘These young men risked their lives. You think they would do that for a ruse?’ asked another.

Swan was getting a solid notion of who belonged to which faction, just from body language. The richest men seemed inclined to surrender. The middling men seemed inclined to fight.

He also had the oddest idea — that Zambale and the president of the Mahona knew each other. And were shamming enmity. It made no sense, but he could not shake it.

Swan spread his hands. ‘You know that in Thrace, Omar Reis promised lenient terms to the merchant class.’ He smiled. ‘After they surrendered the towns, he had the older men crucified and their families sold into slavery.’ It wasn’t quite true. But his words had the desired effect.

The president rose. ‘You are a pair of liars, messires. The Turks keep their promises. It is the Grand Master who is the father of lies.’

Swan bit his lip. He didn’t, at some rarefied level, care much if the Turks took all the Genoese islands in the eastern Mediterranean, but at another level it stuck in his craw that forty rich men were prepared to sell their religion and their peasants to the Turks to maintain control of their precious money. And the street imp — the son of a Southwark whore — couldn’t resist twisting their noses.

So he shrugged. ‘I have delivered my message. If you are so craven and so greedy that you intend to surrender your possessions without a fight, I swear to you, messires, that should the Christian fleet triumph, I’ll make sure that every one of you loses everything — as traitors to the religion, and heretics.’

It was well said — calm, arrogant, and contemptuous. Swan was quite proud of himself. Even the president paled.

And then he ordered his men-at-arms to throw them into a dungeon.

‘What in the name of heaven possessed you to say such a thing?’ Zambale asked. ‘Now they’ll never let us go!’ But the big man sat back and laughed. ‘I liked it, though.’

Swan drank some water that had seen wine once. ‘You weren’t so gentle with them yourself,’ he said.

Zambale shrugged and stretched himself. The straw was clean. ‘I loathe them and all they stand for. Still — if they have us killed here, it’s not the glorious end I was looking for.’

Swan spoke from recent conversion. ‘Death,’ he said, ‘is pretty much the same whether in the heat of battle or in bed of old age.’

Zambale chuckled. ‘Make that up yourself?’ he asked. ‘So — Englishman — what brings you here?’

Swan liked Zambale despite the bad beginning they had made, but he was still … suspicious. So he didn’t depart from his story — he described being penniless but noble, and applying to become a donat of the order. Zambale listened impatiently.

‘You do not look at women like a priest,’ Zambale said.

Swan smiled. ‘I am not a priest.’

‘You never mention the saints. I’ve hardly seen you pray. Come — for whom do you really work?’

Swan smiled. ‘I am as you see — a donat of the order.’

Zambale lay back. ‘Have it as you will.’

The next morning — they had to guess as they had no access to the outdoors — a pair of black-capped magistrates came and sat outside their iron-barred cell.

‘How far away is the allied fleet?’ one asked.

Swan affected disdain. ‘Why tell you? You’ll pass it to your friends, the Turks.’

The two magistrates looked at each other.

One man said, ‘It is possible that the council may elect to defend the island.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘But our information is that the order has only five galleys, all blockaded in Mytilini.’

Zambale nodded. ‘That much is true.’ He shrugged.

‘They seem confident,’ said one magistrate.

‘What do you know of the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ asked the other.

Swan managed a smile. ‘A great deal. But you can see them from your walls.’

‘Tell him!’ said the first magistrate.

‘They are ignorant boys!’ spat the other.

The two men glared at each other.

Swan lay back on the straw as if uninterested. It was one of the finest acts of his life. But his brain was working at fever pitch. It occurred to him that he needed to know how they already knew where the order’s galleys were.

Apparently Zambale’s brain was also working feverishly. ‘Have the Turks sent their terms?’ he asked.

The older magistrate nodded. ‘Yes, young man.’

‘They are not what we were promised,’ said the other, somewhat ingenuously.

The older man glared at his compatriot.

Swan regarded them from his straw and wondered whether he was infested with fleas and lice yet. He already itched. He stank of fear and fish and sweat.

The two men asked a few more questions. Neither Zambale nor Swan offered any information about the location of the Christian fleet. Eventually, the two men left.

‘They’re fishing,’ Zambale said.

‘They’re desperate,’ Swan said. ‘Last night they weren’t desperate. How bad are the Turkish terms?’

‘What is it about the composition of the Turkish fleet?’ Zambale asked. ‘Perhaps the Turks have heavy gonnes?’

Swan lay back and tried to think.

Time passed. They were brought good bread and strong, if young, wine, and some fish. They ate it all.

Swan was growing to like Zambale a good deal. In prison, the younger man didn’t posture and his desire to prove Swan his inferior had vanished, to be replaced by an easy raillery and a certain amount of teamwork.

Zambale shrugged after dinner. ‘I’ll get out,’ he said. ‘I’m rich, and I have things these pigs want. I’ll have you out of here like a pretty girl gets out of a convent.’

Swan nodded. ‘If the order arranges a release for me, I’ll get you out, as well,’ he said.

Like boys on an outing, they swore.

Later, a pair of heavily armoured soldiers came. They had short spears, Milanese breast and back plates and full arm armour and helmets.

‘Uh-oh,’ Swan muttered.

A third man — the man who delivered food — opened the door. In Greek, he said, ‘Only the man calling himself the Lord of Eressos, please. Or they will be very rough.’

Zambale rose. He looked at Swan and shrugged. ‘If you find they killed me, get my cousins to bury me.’

Swan bowed. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he said.

Zambale clasped his hand. He didn’t say any more. He looked at the two soldiers with a contempt that Swan wished he could emulate, and was marched away.

Almost a quarter of an hour elapsed before a tall African in impeccable Italian clothes slipped into the antechamber of the cell, outside the bars.

Swan’s whole body clenched.