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

The man bowed, in the Moslem way. ‘Master Suani?’ he asked.

One of Auntie’s Africans. She had four or five — he could remember them. Not the steward — Swan had seen him killed. But the other man had been present — he racked his brain. Swan didn’t know the man’s name, but he thought that he knew his face.

‘You have the advantage of me,’ Swan said in Arabic.

‘My mistress is even now bargaining for your life with her brother,’ the tall African said. He grinned. ‘I left Master Drappierro questioning your accomplice. Do you know that the gentlemen who hold this town have sold you-’

Another voice cut across the African’s. ‘Not so fast, Mustafa.’ Messire Drappierro appeared out of the gloom, flanked by another pair of guards.

Swan’s brain raced along a dozen channels at once.

Drappierro turned. ‘Everyone out. You too, Mustafa.’ He gave orders in his usual tone of absolute power. The soldiers walked off without a murmur. Mustafa raised an eyebrow and then bowed towards Swan.

‘I promise you, you will prefer my mistress to anything this man offers,’ he said.

When Mustafa was gone, Drappierro came and sat by the bars of Swan’s cell. ‘Where is the ring?’ he asked abruptly.

Swan was ready. From the moment he saw Drappierro, he had decided that it was all about the ring — that Drappierro’s lust for antiquities was such that it was the lever that could move him. The question reinforced his guess.

‘I have it,’ Swan said.

Drappierro leapt to his feet. ‘Give it to me!’ he said.

Swan laughed. It sounded a little forced, to him — not his best bluff. He was, in truth, completely terrified.

‘You don’t think I’d have it here?’ he said.

Drappierro glared at him. ‘God knows you have had plenty of opportunity to get it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to bring it to me.’

Swan sat down. ‘It is in Mytilini,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Drappierro asked. ‘I have people there — I’ll have it fetched.’

‘And you’ll sell me to Auntie,’ Swan replied.

Drappierro leaned closer. ‘My dear boy,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to sell you to Auntie — although I doubt anyone’s ever called her that in the course of her illustrious life. Do you know why she is here? It is curiously apropos. Hamza Beg is the commander of this fleet — but the command should have been Omar Reis’s. He sails in the second rank — but his sister is here for the Sultan. She is Mehmed’s eye. Hamza Beg has failed at Rhodos and failed at Kos and now, if he hesitates here, Master Swan, she will be rid of him and her brother will be the most powerful soldier in the empire. Those are Turkish politics. Omar Reis is my friend. Not yours, I think. You may trust him to kill you in a most imaginative way if he catches you. Imagine your death throes while you chew on your severed penis. One of a hundred hideous humiliations that the fertile mind of the Moslem has concocted.’ Drappierro allowed himself the flicker of a smile.

‘I’m pretty sure they do the same in Florence,’ Swan said, just to swallow his terror. ‘And the Allied fleet will come-’

Drappierro sat up angrily. ‘What a foolish lie,’ he said. ‘The Genoese Grand Fleet is long gone. You know how I know? I ordered them myself.’ He looked at Swan and shook his head, as if disappointed. ‘Listen, Master Swan. You are a promising young man. You seem to have real taste and you seem to have a ready wit. I need you — in fact, I need a dozen like you. I intend to run most of the Mediterranean over the next decade.’ His smile flickered again. ‘This is a very difficult game, and I don’t expect you know a third of it. So please, leave the thinking to me.’

‘Planning to overthrow the Grand Turk?’ Swan asked.

Drappierro smiled gently. ‘No, my dear. Much the opposite. Don’t you think that Christianity — inasmuch as there ever was an organised Christianity — is done? The Turks are the new power, and they will rein supreme. The fall of Constantinople signals the new era.’ He spread his hands. ‘You think me a traitor? The traitors are those who want to provoke a bloodbath that we cannot win. Or take another view — the traitors are the kings of England, Scotland, France, Castile and the Emperor, who will not leave their squabbles to make a real effort to defeat the Turk. Even if they did, I expect they’d fail. But they won’t even try. The West is done.’ He smiled again. ‘Don’t you think?’

Swan thought that he had a point. But he also thought that he sounded like an insufferable prick busy convincing himself.

Swan — ever a man for the main chance — was puzzled to find that he couldn’t stomach this, of all treasons. What an odd cause to choose for dying , he thought.

He cringed at the image of a tortured death.

‘I have the ring,’ he said.

Drappierro shocked him. ‘Then I’ll send you for it, of course,’ the Genoese ambassador said. ‘And that surprises you. Really, my boy, you must school your face better than that.’ Drappierro stood up. ‘Be back in four days, or I’ll kill Zambale. If you aren’t back in a week I’ll send word to have your so-called wife murdered. It won’t be pretty, even if she is a whore who opens and shuts to order — understand me, Master Swan? You have palpable hostages to fortune and I can strike at them all. Even your friends in Rome. Messire Di Brachio is recovering — did you know that? Are you two lovers?’

Swan was shaking.

Drappierro lowered his voice. ‘Really, Master Swan. Do not be a fool. If you return with the ring, I can arrange your escape. From Auntie and from Omar Reis. Neither cares so very much, eh? Bring me the ring, and I will be your friend. Need I say more?’

Swan took a steadying breath and wished he were Zambale. ‘I need more than four days,’ he said. ‘The knights won’t let me go so easily.’

‘Oh, but they will. I thought you were so intelligent,’ Drappierro said lazily. ‘And by the way, you have just betrayed that the other boy’s life matters to you.’ He made a head motion, barely distinguishable. ‘Very well. Seven days. And then I send for both of them to die.’

Swan couldn’t help himself. ‘I could leave Zambale to die and beat your messenger to my wife,’ he said.

Drappierro nodded. ‘You could,’ he said. He smiled with a smugness that was impossible not to hate. ‘But you won’t.’

Utterly in charge of the situation and everything around him, Messire Drappierro rose, and gave Swan a civil bow. ‘I’ll see you in a week, then,’ he said. He walked out through the open oak doors. He looked back and paused. ‘I own … a great deal of Mytilini. And most of the people in it. Don’t imagine you can deceive me. I’ll be watching through other eyes. Eyes that, if you stand with me, you can help me to command.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t want you to make a mistake and try to resist because you hate me, Master Swan. That wastes my time and your life.’ He nodded. ‘Get the ring. Nothing else matters.’

Swan let out a breath and realised he’d been holding it a long time. Drappiero’s footsteps rang on the stone, and then the man was gone.

Swan didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone so much in his entire life.

Moments later, armoured men came and unlocked his cell. ‘You are free to go,’ one said in Burgundian French.

Swan received his sword and his purse — empty — and was escorted to the port, where the same fishing boat was waiting, surrounded by soldiers.

They sailed out unmolested, in a way that suggested that every Turkish ship knew exactly who they were.

Giorgios, the fisherman, spat angrily over the side. ‘Maybe death would have been better,’ he said. ‘I have smuggled on these coasts for twenty years, and now every man in Chios and all the Turks have me marked.’