Christian Cameron: Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople

Auntie was magnificent, naked, in the light of a single lamp wick, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. She curved, and curved.

There was a sound of running feet.

Auntie said something softly. Swan would have sworn she said ‘Shit’, in some language or other. She picked her long shawl off the floor and slipped it around her body.

Swan tried to prop himself on his elbow, but he didn’t seem to be in full control of his body. One part of him was working very well – rather embarrassingly well. The rest – refused their duty.

She slipped out through the curtain.

Another scream, and the unmistakable sound of one blade on another.

He tried to get to his feet, and failed. His erection was comic, and he giggled and fell back on the bed. The colours of the wall hangings were deep and vibrant, more like sounds than colours.

Drugged .

He couldn’t stop giggling.

A figure appeared at the curtain. More running feet, and more blades.

A second figure appeared.

‘My poor dear,’ whispered Khatun Bengül, in Italian. And then, ‘My. My, my.’ And a giggle.

Well-muscled arms lifted him. He couldn’t have resisted if he’d wished to.

He was wrapped in a sheet, and thrown over a man’s shoulders. He had the wind knocked out of him.

He could only see the floor.

Through the curtain to a vestibule. Magnificent with gold writing – Persian. There was a corpse, face down, on the tiled floor.

Stairs.

A pool of blood, and blood running down the steps like some sort of ghastly waterfall. At the top of the steps, behind them, lay the African, dead, his head half severed by a scimitar.

And the blood ran on and on, over the tiled floor., down the steps like some ghastly waterfall. Beautiful, in a way.

Good Christ .

The man carrying him ran down the steps and into another hall, and then ran as hard as a man can run while carrying another man.

It was like a nightmare, except that Swan was never afraid. They crossed a courtyard – arched, colonnaded, and magnificent with glazed tiles and fine hangings. Even in his dream state, Swan realised he’d been there before. With horses.

Up. A flight of steps, and there were lights appearing all along the top of the colonnade opposite.

‘Faster!’ said Khatun Bengül.

And then they went through a door, into a blaze of light.

Through a set of beads, and another, and past a great set of double doors of cedar inset with ivory and silver, and then he was unceremoniously lowered into a great trunk, also of cedar. He hit his head, and admired the shooting stars that whirled around him.

Khatun Bengül’s head appeared, framed in the light. ‘My poor Frank,’ she said. Her eyes shifted away. And back. A certain light came into her eyes, and she leaned down and put her lips on his.

He responded instantly. His face rose to hers. The tip of her tongue caressed his, and then she was gone.

Someone slammed the lid of the trunk shut, and he was alone in the darkness.

The extreme alertness didn’t fade, and he heard a male voice – raised in anger, but some rooms away. Perhaps out in the central courtyard. And then another, and a woman’s, shrill as a fishwife’s. All in Turkish.

Then the sound of a man’s hand knocking at the outer door.

‘Khatun Bengül!’ he cried. ‘Khatun Bengül!’ and then a long, calm string of words in Turkish.

He heard her, even across several rooms, go barefoot to the door of her apartments and open it.

Turahanoglu Omar Reis . Even full of whatever he’d been given, he knew that voice.

Khatun Bengül’s father.

Idris’s father.

What am I doing here ? Swan thought.

Auntie must be his sister , he thought, his first piece of deductive reasoning in many hours. Things fell into place.

His fearless lassitude fell away, and he was suddenly and completely terrified.

Omar Reis spoke to his daughter for a long time.

A need to piss began to creep into Swan’s hierarchy of needs. And his posture, folded in the trunk, was growing painful. His lower legs were bent back under him. His knees burned.

She said something imperious. Swan had been an adolescent – he knew that tone. She said something like Fine! Do whatever you want .

More footsteps. Male. And many of them.

After a while, he decided that soldiers or servants were searching the place.

‘How dare you! Not in my room!’ she said, with all the drama of the young, in Arabic.

The cedar doors crashed open.

I’m going to die naked, in a fancy trunk, with a raging hard-on . Swan couldn’t decide whether to be more terrified or to laugh aloud.

Drugged. For sure.

Drawers were opened.

A trunk was opened. Then another.

Then a new voice – calm, level, and wheedling.

Idris.

Then Khatun Bengül – a shriek of adolescent righteousness that crossed language and cultural barriers.

In a blaze of light, his trunk was opened.

A crack.

Swan’s fear made him virtually unable to breathe.

Someone’s hand held the trunk open just a little. Idris’s voice – quite close. All Turkish. Swan had no idea what Idris was saying.

He lay there, waiting for the trunk to be opened farther. The top was ajar about the breadth of a man’s fingers.

Khatun Bengül was weeping. She said – something – through her tears.

Idris sounded agitated now.

The fingers inside the trunk lid were those of a middle-aged man – the nails were clean, but there were scars across all four, and a great ring of silver, gold and a blood-red stone engraved – beautifully engraved – with a running horse. In Greek, the letters by the horse said ‘Eupatridae’. The well-born. The jewel of some Ancient Greek aristocrat, two thousand years ago. On the finger of a Turkish warlord. It had to be Omar Reis’s hand.

Swan had time to read the stone, admire its age, and say three Ave Marias.

The trunk slammed shut. He heard Khatun Bengül’s sobs, and her brother’s gentle remonstrances, and then – silence.

Time passed.

His cramps grew greater than his fear, and then his need to piss grew greater than either.

Time passed without a rush of feet, or the blaze of light that would herald his death.

The last footsteps died away – there were no more shouts from the courtyard.

The trunk lid was thrown back, and Khatun Bengül leaned in. ‘My poor Englishman,’ she said. She extended him a slim hand, and he took it, and to his immense mortification, he couldn’t rise out of the box. His feet and lower legs were pinned under him, and there was no feeling in them at all.

‘You must come,’ she said.

He raised himself on his arms, and she pulled on his legs until they came free. He couldn’t feel them at all – it was the oddest, and in some ways the most terrifying, feeling. He couldn’t stand. She couldn’t carry him.

‘You must do better! If my father finds you here, he will have to kill you.’

Swan looked at her for a moment. ‘My lady,’ he said in Arabic, ‘you brought me here.’

She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘So?’

‘I was in no – ahem – danger. Where I was.’ His Arabic wasn’t well suited to the situation. He didn’t know any words to convey anything salacious.

‘Auntie intended to fuck you and then sell you to the Armenians,’ Khatun Bengül said, matter-of-factly, in prim Italian. ‘I assumed you would prefer to remain free and alive.’ She smiled, utterly desirable. ‘Perhaps Auntie’s body is worth your life?’