Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five: Rhodes (8 page)

To Swan, it looked more defensible than any place he’d ever seen, except perhaps Monemvasia.

The sun was setting red in the west when they glided inside the fortified breakwater and the rowers folded their heavy oars away, raising them out of the oar ports and feeding them along the central catwalks or into the racks along the ship’s sides. Mytilini cheered them as they landed – seven Christian galleys – and the cheers from the garrison high above met the cheers of the Greek populace lining the beach. On Lesvos, the Genoese – at least, in the guise of the Gattelusi, the ruling family – were well beloved. The Gattelusi had married into the imperial family of Byzantium more than once, and they shared the good looks of the Paleologi and some of their indolence. But their marriages, their powerful private army and their occasional rescues of the Byzantine emperors – some financial, and some military – had earned them the love of their Greek subjects – who also paid the lightest taxes in the eastern Mediterranean.

Swan leaped over the stern to the beach and Peter tossed him the leather bag that held his own clothes and then the leather portmanteau that held Swan’s kit – and then leaped down himself. They walked up the beach, teetering slightly after days at sea. A pair of Greek men came and took their bags with wide smiles.

‘It
is
nice to be so popular,’ Swan said, smiling at a very pretty Greek girl. She smiled – then blushed and dropped her eyes. And clutched an older woman standing near by, who gave a sniff.

Fra Tommaso landed on the sand with a thump. The oarsmen were all off – most of them already pushing through the crowd. They weren’t going to the brothels and tavernas that lined the waterfront. In this port, they went first up the hill, towards the fortress, in a long and disorderly line.

Swan saw that his kit had joined the line. Fra Tommaso waited until Fra Domenico joined him on the sand, and the two knights went up the hill. The older knight paused and waved. ‘Coming, young scapegrace?’

Swan followed the knights. The line took for ever to move – it started at the edge of the beach, and wound between the lower gates of the fortress and then up to a point that vanished in the dusk on the side of the hill.

The tavernas along the waterfront served wine to the oarsmen in the line – heavy ceramic beakers full of strong red wine that was delicious after salt air. Swan was on his second cup as he passed through the gate.

The soldier there wore a fine, velvet-covered brigandine and had a heavy war bow in his hand. He smiled constantly, but his eyes moved everywhere.

‘You’re English, I think,’ Swan said.

The man smiled. ‘My da was English,’ he said. ‘I’m Greek.’

‘Seems a long way from London,’ Swan said.

The archer shrugged. ‘My pater was from Cumbria. He came out here after Agincourt.’ His eyes went over Swan’s shoulder, and then flicked back.

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘The Gattelusi hire a great many English,’ he said. ‘They always have.’

‘Englishmen make fine pirates,’ Fra Domenico said. He stooped to scratch a stray cat. Mytilini was full of them.

The line moved on – past the guardpost, and up into the rocks. Swan breathed deeply, just to enjoy the smell. And examined the stonework of the redoubt above him. In the last light of the sun, he could see round stones the size of wagon wheels set into the fabric of the fortification. He tried to imagine why anyone would shape round stones to fit into a fort wall.

He thought – all too often – of the fight in the dark. Of the torches of the Turks revealing the fallen column that half-blocked the passageway.

Three slow steps forward later, and despite his heartbeat soaring and his breath coming hard, he had it, and he said ‘εύρηκα!’

The two knights and his servant all turned on him as if he were a madman.

‘They’re columns! Ancient columns from temples!’ he shouted excitedly. He was all but bouncing on his toes. ‘Those round stones are column drums – ancient ones!’

‘You speak Greek?’ asked a man at his elbow. The man was still smiling, despite half an hour on the hill carrying Swan’s portmanteau.

‘A little, brother,’ Swan said. ‘Those are columns, yes?’

‘From the pagan times,’ agreed the Greek. ‘Over by Kalloni, there are temples.’

‘Like the Parthenon?’ Swan asked.

The Greek shrugged.

Swan waved at a middle-aged woman with a tray full of wine cups. ‘Ο άνθρωπος έχει μια δίψα για το κρασί! This man has a thirst for wine.’

The Greek nodded. ‘Very kind,’ he said in a voice that suggested – politely – that men did not carry heavy leather trunks purely from public spiritedness.

Swan paid the woman and tried a flirtatious smile. She responded with a look that suggested that a life of serving wine to fishermen and pirates had given her some fairly effective armour.

Swan put his smile away for easier prey. And inched up the hillside.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

The timoneer, who was next in line behind Swan, grinned. ‘Ancient tradition here. When a galley comes in, we go to the shrine and take mass.’

‘How ancient?’ Swan asked.

He went up three steps. The steps were very old – smooth as glass.

The line moved again. Now he could see there was a heavy wood and iron door – right in the hillside. A party of men came out of it and squeezed down the steps, all smiles – and headed towards the beach and the tavernas.

Fra Tommaso nodded. ‘They think that taking mass protects them against the sins they have yet to commit,’ he said. But he watched his oarsmen with the fondness of a parent for his children. ‘Speaking of sin, Master Swan – we are invited to the palace. Tonight, we are to be received, and tomorrow, there is some sort of fete in our honour.’

‘We will stay?’ Swan asked, hope springing eternal. The word ‘palace’ alone offered more hope than anything he’d heard since Alexandria.

‘I want the hulls to dry,’ Fra Domenico said. He was looking at Asia across the strait – only a few leagues wide. ‘Faster ships take more prizes.’

Fra Tommaso took Swan’s hand. ‘Listen. We are men of God – you are a volunteer. So we will send you to this festivity tomorrow. As our representative. Yes? And you will not do the order any dishonour. Hmm?’

Swan sighed.

They climbed a few more steps and the deck officers squeezed by them, pausing to embrace the old knight, who blessed each of them. And then the door opened, and Swan could smell incense.

‘Come on,’ Fra Tommaso said, starting down steep steps into the dark interior.

Swan got one step down before he froze.

He felt the man’s neck go just as he pounded the blade into his skull. The skull cracked like an egg and then the whole head collapsed under his weight. Then he felt himself repeat the blow, even though he knew the man had to be dead.

He tried to rise off the new corpse, but his leg failed him and he sank back – now kneeling on both knees.

He was kneeling on cold stone. Someone was trying to pull him, and he got his arm around the man’s neck and jerked him off balance …

‘It’s me! Christ on the cross, are ye wode!’ shouted Peter in his ear.

Fra Domenico caught Peter and pushed him away. ‘He’s fighting under the city! On Rhodos! Let him be!’ Hands seized Swan around the waist and turned him – so that he could see stars, and the shocked faces of the timoneer and the man carrying his trunk.

He took a shuddering breath.

Fra Domenico turned his head. ‘Smell the incense, my son. See the candles and feel God’s holy presence. There is nothing here for you to fear. This is a holy place.’ His voice was very gentle – very calm. And it ran on, and on.

Swan found that he was … himself. Except that his hands were shaking so hard that he could not hold the railing for the stairs.

‘Take him back into the air,’ Tommaso said.

Swan closed his eyes and swallowed bile. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘I’ll go down.’

He made a foot reach down, and then another, and then another. It seemed like a hundred steps down into the earth, and he could feel the weight of the tons of rock over his head, a palpable force pressing down on him. He was sweating as if he were fighting in armour.

But he made it to the sandy floor of the cave. And the cave wasn’t dark at all. It was lit by a hundred candles, and the smell of incense drowned the smell of blood that stuck in his nose the way dog shit can stick to your throat.

The priest was Greek. But for once, that didn’t seem to matter. He smiled, said a few words, and gave the two knights communion. They knelt to take it and muttered Latin invocations.

Despite his spinning head – as much to control it as anything – Swan took the bread and murmured, ‘πατήρ μου δίδωσιν ὑμῖν τὸν ἄρτον ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ.’

The priest raised a clerical eyebrow. And gave the host to Peter.

A hundred heartbeats later, he was out under the stars with the two knights. He took in great gasps if air as if he’d been unable to breathe.

‘You’ll want to bathe before we go to the palace,’ Fra Domenico said, more kindly than Swan had ever seen him. The man’s ring glittered with an inner light as he gestured. ‘There’s a bath just there, where the street rises in front of the gates. Hurry.’

Swan was beginning to get his bearings. ‘How ancient was that … chapel?’

Tommaso shrugged. ‘From pagan times, no doubt – but no less holy for that.’

Fra Domenico shook his head. ‘No – our young hero is smitten by the ancient world. Aren’t you, lad? Nymphs and satyrs and priestesses.’

‘I should like to see the temples at Kalloni.’ For the first time in two weeks, he thought of Cardinal Bessarion. ‘And my master, Cardinal Bessarion, had a mission for me – at Kalloni.’

‘Go and bathe,’ Fra Tommaso said, a little impatiently. ‘We’ll clean our throats with some good red wine. I want to render unto Caesar, and visit my friends here.’

The baths were packed with sailors and oarsmen, but Swan’s status as a Donat and his fame from the fight under the walls won him a spot in the bath almost immediately. Men moved aside – men bowed.

There is something very odd about accepting praise, or even courtesy, while naked. Swan felt shy – he certainly didn’t enjoy the attention as he might have on another occasion.

He didn’t pay enough heed to the men ahead of him, and hopped down into the first bath.

And shrieked.

All around him, oarsmen and sailors cursed – and laughed.

‘First time, my lord?’ asked an oarsman with the body of Herakles. The man had more muscles on his abdomen than Swan would have thought possible. The water was so hot that Swan was afraid that his testicles might burn off.

‘Yes,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Lower yourself,’ said another man. ‘Slowly. Don’t fight it. Relaxes the muscles.’

They
all
looked like Herakles. And they were all grinning.

‘Cup of wine or two, hot bath, a girl on your lap, and the world is a fine place,’ agreed the deep-voiced figure of Poseidon just by him.

It was dark, and hot – but the water was so hot that it steadied him, and he didn’t have to be afraid. And he was … touched by the respect of the oarsmen. When he got out, another man led him to the cold water, and he swam a little.

A small boy offered him a cup of wine from a tray.

The sailor put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not unless you want to buy the boy, too, mate,’ he said. And grinned. ‘Custom of the house.’

Swan smiled at the boy and shook his head – and made his way to the dry room where he had shed his clothes. He felt so very clean that the clothes he’d been wearing now seemed filthy. He opened his portmanteau and dressed in his second best – brown cloth – too warm for spring in Greece but clean and neat. He paid an old woman a few bronze sequins to do his hair and he sat on the porch of the bath with a cup of wine while the two knights talked to the Greek priest from the cave in the outdoor wine shop under the eaves.

‘A person might think you were a pretty girl and not a knight of Christ at all,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Although, I confess that, having met your wife, her standards might have – hmm – rubbed off?’ He laughed.

‘His wife?’ Fra Domenico asked.

‘A very beautiful woman,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Fra Domenico smiled – a private smile, as if something he’d understood had been confirmed. ‘Have you any children, my son?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps we will, with God’s help,’ Swan said, and just for a moment, he saw her naked in his mind’s eye.

‘Children are the greatest blessing of marriage,’ Fra Domenico said.

I’m receiving marriage counselling from the most notorious pirate in the Inner Sea
, thought Swan. He paid a small tip to the old Greek woman, who smiled toothlessly and patted him.

‘Adonis is prepared to grace us with his company,’ Fra Tommaso said.

Peter nodded from the porch of the baths. ‘I’ll just be making my way down to the waterfront,’ he said. ‘If you happen to kill anyone, be sure and take their purses – eh,
my lord
?’

Swan took this as a cue and delved into his own purse for a handful of ducats.

‘Any left for your own girl?’ Peter asked quietly.

Swan shrugged. He felt clean. He was almost out of money and, as usual, ready to face the world one desperate crisis at a time.

The palace of the Gattelusi appeared small enough from the outside. Located securely on the highest point of the acropolis inside the fortress, it was itself a citadel, with its own walls and its own chapel. The interior of the great fortress was not flat – rather, it rose constantly from the three successive gates, past the church, to the citadel. In the gatehouse and again on the walls of the citadel, the arms of the Gattelusi were carved into the stone – over and over – alongside the great double-headed eagle of the Paleologi. To the left and right, on one of the great towers of the citadel, there were – Swan stopped walking and fell behind Fra Tommaso – warriors. And men fighting animals.

Fra Domenico turned. ‘Master Swan!’ he called out.

Swan heard him, in a distant way. He was transfixed.

Fra Domenico walked back down the hill. And looked up. The last rays of the spring sun put a ruddy light over the high tower and placed the figures in high relief.