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

He crouched on the ledge. He wasn’t dead, but that was about all he could say. He was now bitterly cold and very tired. It was completely dark. Utterly dark.

How, exactly, do I get myself into these things?

He began to explore, cautiously. His rational mind said that he would be weaker later.

His questing arms found a column. He put his back against it and stood cautiously, waiting for the feeling of stone against his head all the way, but when he was standing tall, he felt as if there was still a great deal of space above him.

There was another ledge above the one he was on. It was six feet above him, and he only found it because his hands were feeling for the ceiling. He got his fingers over the edge, and then his hands, and then his arms.

He didn’t make a conscious decision. He jumped, pushed with his arms, and he was lying on cool, dry stone. He instantly revised his chances of survival. This was . . . intentional. This shelf – it was like . . .

A path.

He crawled six feet and felt the drop just in time. The shelf ended abruptly. It fell away to the water.

Swan knew that, at this point, if he went back to the water, he’d die. He was just barely managing to keep the panic in check, but under the clarity of his thinking was an abyss of pain and fear. He was close to losing it. The thought I’m going to die alone in the dark was fully formed and very close.

He turned, with infinite patience, and crawled very slowly back the way he’d come. He knew he was on ‘new ground’ when he came to rock with no water on it. He crawled.

And crawled.

After ten minutes, he knew that he was going – somewhere.

Further, it occurred to him that the air was fresh.

I’m not in a well , he thought. Or rather, hoped.

At the next column, he pulled himself into a crouch, and then sat with his back against the pillar. After a while, his back warmed the pillar. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

He tried to think of Khatun Bengül’s body. Of her lips. Or Violante’s or Tilda’s.

But the darkness was all around him, and he was cold, and it is very hard to be brave in the dark, alone, when you are cold and wet.

But he must have slept.

Because he woke.

And there was . . . light.

Not much light. But after hours of complete darkness, it might have been direct sunlight.

He wasn’t in a well – he was in some sort of underground canal. The canal had a ledge underwater – probably for workmen to stand on while they cleared obstructions and pollutions. Above that was a walkway, on which he’d crawled. He looked back. He could see the end, about forty feet behind him.

He’d crawled forty feet.

He sighed.

He looked down into the water. It was only about six feet deep.

It had a current.

And a few yards away, it flowed out from under an arch. So he’d . . . swum? Been floated? Under that arch.

Somewhere, there would be an entrance. If workmen came here . . .

He got to his feet. His arms were covered in bruises, and he had tender places on his head. His hands looked as if he’d been in a fight.

He started walking.

After what had to have been a mile – an incredible distance underground – there were steps, and then . . .

The tunnel split. The water came down a small waterfall – he flashed on the blood running down the steps, and suddenly he thought, Why did Khatun Bengül kill to get me?

None of it made any sense.

Or rather, it all made a scary kind of sense. Like the sorts of dramas that had played out at England’s royal court.

He turned right, because he had a feeling about how the canal ran. He’d read his classics. The water must come from an aqueduct. That meant – since water flowed downhill – that he was now going east, towards the Venetian quarter.

He had begun to look at every light-hole. They were evenly spaced, for the most part – twenty feet or more over his head. As he walked, he began to make a plan. After a while, he laughed aloud, because if he was planning, then his brain was working, and he didn’t think he was going to die, which was funny, because he was still alone and naked and cold.

But an hour later, he climbed through a set of obstructions into brighter light. He could see people – he’d been hearing them for half an hour. The sides of the cistern had long since collapsed, and become a public fountain, and on one side, a pair of small boys bathed while on the other, their mothers filled jars.

They were Greek women. He could hear them speaking Greek.

He moved carefully behind a pillar.

‘Despoina,’ he called out. ‘I need help, in the name of Christ.’

The two women drawing water startled like deer. They both looked around.

‘I’ve escaped from the Turk. I’m naked, and I need clothes. I promise I can pay. Please help me,’ he said in what he hoped was his most complacent and charming Greek.

The nearer of the two women made a motion with her hand to the other.

‘Show yourself, heretic,’ she said.

He called out, ‘I’m naked.’

‘All the better,’ she said, drawing a knife from her gown. ‘Let me see you,’ she ordered.

Swan emerged from the columns.

She laughed. ‘A Frank! Truly, you are not lying.’ She spat. ‘Why should I save you? You Franks are worse than the Turks.’

‘Money? Save me, and I will pay.’ Swan backed away.

She looked around. ‘Truly? You will pay? So will the Turks, I would guess. Eh?’ she asked, and waved the knife at him.

The other woman laughed. ‘He is young, and handsome.’ She made an obscene gesture. ‘And naked.’

Half an hour later, he was at the gates of the Venetian quarter, dressed as a Greek woman. Silently, head averted, he handed a folded note to the janissary, who passed it in to the Venetian guard.

Alessandro appeared. ‘I’ll answer for this woman,’ he said coolly.

The janissary saluted and smirked, and Swan followed his capitano .

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alessandro said.

‘I was set up. I survived.’ He shook his head. ‘I escaped.’

‘How do you come to be dressed . . . like a woman? Like a Greek woman?’ Alessandro asked.

‘It’s complicated,’ Swan said.

Alessandro stopped and shocked him by embracing him. ‘Well done,’ he said.

‘What – well done for not getting killed?’ Swan asked.

‘Given the way things are going, not getting killed gets a pass,’ Alessandro said.

After a lot of sleep, he sat with a cup of wine in Alessandro’s room. ‘This is how I see it,’ he said. ‘Omar Reis planned to use me. His sister planned to use me and sell me, but Omar Reis always intended to make an unpleasant incident of the whole thing. And kill me.’

Alessandro fingered his beard.

‘Had I been caught – red handed, so to speak—’

‘The Sultan might have refused the embassy, or merely used it as a pretext to keep us waiting.’ Alessandro shrugged. ‘As if he needs a pretext.’ The Venetian leaned forward. ‘I should send you across to Galata before the Turks send for you.’

Swan looked out into the sunlight. Warm and dry, with wine in him, the whole thing was beginning to seem more like an adventure. ‘I don’t think Omar Reis can admit I was in his house.’

‘He must know. He knows you weren’t here. His janissaries must tell him of every movement here.’

‘Yes – but can he admit that I penetrated his sanctum,’ Swan enjoyed his double entendre, ‘and lived to tell of it?’