Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Two: Venice (13 page)

She put a strong hand in his hand and hauled him to his feet. His horse was two steps away, and he mounted as efficiently as he could manage. He knew he looked like a fool to the Turks. He couldn’t help it.

‘My brother has given you this mare?’ she said.

‘Khatun Bengül!’ shouted the second ‘boy’. In Arabic.

‘Shush!’ the Turkish woman said. ‘I am Salim.’

‘You
touched
him.’

‘He was on the ground and needed help.’

‘And now he knows you are a woman!’

‘You shouted my name across the world!’

‘He is a Frank. They are as stupid as cattle.’ The second woman was ten years older than Khatun Bengül, and several inches shorter. Under her mantle and turban, Swan judged her to be every bit as attractive, with beautiful eyes and high cheeks. Khatun Bengül, however, had a translucent skin that Swan had seldom seen – hers was the colour of oak newly split – not white, but like slightly aged ivory – and her brows were black and strong.

He was staring.

‘Now he will be besotted with you, you little witch.’ The older woman laughed.

‘He does not seem very stupid, Auntie,’ Khatun Bengül said.

‘Bah – all Franks are stupid. I’ve owned dozens. Look at him. He can’t even ride properly.’ The older woman gave him the once-over. ‘Handsome, though. Look at those lips.’

The two women tittered together.

Swan, who had laboured for months at Arabic, had a sudden love for the language that no amount of Rabbi Aaron’s teaching could ever give him.

‘I like his hands,’ Khatun Bengül said.

‘Perhaps we might ride back to the carts?’ Swan said in Italian.

Khatun Bengül nodded.

‘But he rides like a sack of camel shit. Really. What do they teach Frankish boys?’ Auntie asked.

The falconers returned an hour later, and they ate a sumptuous picnic of mutton with a dozen sweet things and some spices that Swan loved, and chicken. They all drank an odd, salty drink that Swan disliked at first taste, but grew used to with practice.

‘What is it?’ he asked Idris.

‘The drink?’ Idris asked. ‘It’s just . . . milk. Hmm. And some salt and spice and water.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a word I don’t know in Italian. When milk . . . isn’t milk any more.’

‘Cheese?’ Swan asked.

Idris shook his head.

After lunch, the falconing party rode off again, leaving Swan with the servants. He didn’t mind – he rode his mare into the fields, going more slowly then faster, changing gaits – learning to ride.

He was resting, drinking more of the salty drink from a glass bottle provided by a servant, when he heard the auntie shriek.

‘You cannot, you hussy. Your father would burst himself. He’ll gut me – and you.’

Khatun Bengül – if that was her name – appeared around the wagon, riding as if she was a satyress – the image came quite spontaneously to Swan. There was something erotic in the way she rode.

‘You do not fly the falcons?’ she said in her curious and, to him, very beautiful Italian.

‘I do not know falconry,’ he said, smiling his most ingratiating smile.

‘I could teach you a little,’ she said. ‘We are not . . . expected to gallop over fields. But I was going to fly my birds.’

Her aunt rode around the side of the wagon.

‘Look at him – he knows you are a woman. It’s written all over him,’ said Auntie, in Arabic. ‘Listen, my little filly. I was young once, too.’

‘You are a coarse old woman,’ Khatun Bengül spat. ‘I want to teach him to fly a bird.’

Auntie said something in Turkish.

Khatun Bengül flushed.

Swan would have given a year of his life to know what had been said. He turned the sounds over in his head – one of his special skills, and the reason he could learn languages so very fast. As fast as the two women could spit at each other, he processed the syllables. He had no idea what they meant. But he would.

Auntie seemed to be backing down.

‘If you would care to ride with us,’ Khatun Bengül said, ‘my auntie will keep a very careful watch on us.’ She spat the words.

‘Don’t think I can’t understand when you talk love words to the dirty Frank,’ said the auntie.

Khatun Bengül flushed red. ‘This is Italian,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with love.’

However, despite their inauspicious beginning, the next hour was a pleasure. Khatun Bengül flew her two small birds with expertise, gossiping in Arabic and Turkish with her aunt on the one hand and coaching Swan to fly a gyrfalcon on the other in Italian. And when the gyrfalcon, tired of his inept hand motions, bated, and then slipped his jesses and flew into an oak tree, the women laughed, and Swan laughed, and when he dismounted, stripped out of his kaftan and climbed the tree, successfully retrieving the bird, the two women clapped their hands together as if he were a conjuror.

‘He really is handsome,’ Auntie said. ‘Pity he isn’t a slave.’

That took the wind out of Swan’s sails. Auntie was looking at him with the sort of appraisal with which older women had been examining him since he had turned fourteen, and ordinarily he’d have arranged . . .

But he couldn’t take his eyes off Khatun Bengül.

Perhaps fortunately for all of them, Idris returned shortly after the adventure of the gyrfalcon and the tree.

He clapped Swan on the back. ‘I see you have learned the first lesson of falconry – how to retrieve a lost bird,’ he said. ‘You have done this before?’

‘One of the boys is teaching me,’ Swan said.

Idris laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘My father will indeed have us all killed,’ he laughed. ‘You know she’s my sister, eh?’

Swan sighed. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘And a force of nature,’ Idris acknowledged. They had turned their horses towards home. Most of the Turks had mounted a second horse.

‘She was very . . . courteous to me,’ Swan said.

Idris laughed, his head thrown back. ‘She makes boys bark at the moon,’ he said. ‘Ah, my Englishman. Do not cast languishing glances on my sister. She spits on the men who worship her.’ He took a flask out of his kaftan, drank, and handed it to Swan, who drank. Greek wine – sweet and strong.

‘All the good Persian poets were drunks,’ Idris said. ‘I’m working on it.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, Holy Koran forbids it. Or so my imam insists.’

Later, after they had passed the Belgrade Gate, Idris said, ‘Listen – I owe you my life, but you must never mention that my sister was here today. When I saw her . . . never mind.’

‘I will swear,’ Swan promised.

‘It’s a hard life for her,’ Idris said. ‘In Thrace, when my father is commanding an army, she rides like a man – shoots a bow, sleeps on the ground. It is how we were raised. My mother – she was a tribal woman, you know?’

Swan didn’t know, but he nodded.

‘Owned her own horses. Owns farms in Anatolia. So we were raised to the saddle. And in this cursed city, poor Khatun Bengül must pretend to be a good girl, a nice girl who stays at home and has slaves take money to the poor, who never shows her face, who never rides a horse.’ Idris shrugged. ‘We don’t always get along.’

Khatun Bengül leaned in from Swan’s other side. ‘He uses me to protect him from Father,’ she said.

Swan looked at her. When he breathed in, he tasted her scent over the smell of flowers and grass and horse.

‘She uses me to protect her from Father, too,’ Idris said.

‘I
am
a nice girl,’ Khatun Bengül protested. ‘I just like to ride.’ She shrugged. ‘And I can do anything a man can do. Better. Men are all fools.’ She tossed her head.

Behind them, all of Idris’s friends were watching her.

Swan took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Every one of us.’

‘Sufia will be in our stables – but available for you at any hour,’ Idris said. They rode past the great aqueduct, through the forum of Constantine, and past the north end of the Hippodrome to the great houses beyond Hagia Sophia.

Swan breathed a sigh of relief when his horse was not stabled in the great cathedral. Sacrilege had its limits.

They rode into the palace quarter and dismounted in the courtyard of a fine square of buildings. Workmen were facing the front of the stables with beautiful fired tiles in a rich blue with the trailing cursive of Persian script. Less than a hundred paces away, a tall minaret was being built on to a low Byzantine church.

Swan handed his horse to a pair of slaves. He put a hand familiarly on Idris’s arm. ‘You have your friends,’ he said. ‘I should go.’

Idris bowed. ‘You are a good guest. Will you come riding again?’

Swan smiled. ‘My lord, the bishop will probably give birth to a cow when he hears that I spent the day with infidels.’

Idris laughed. ‘Tell him my father will have his guts ripped out of his fat stomach if he stops you.’

Idris meant these words as a joke, but they chilled Swan.

Idris leaned closer. ‘Listen – you know this is all a sham? Don’t you? In the spring, my father will lead an army into the Morea and we will take everything Venice has. It’s not even a secret.’

Swan struggled to maintain his composure.

‘Don’t let it come between us,’ Idris said. He smiled. ‘I treasure you. Come ride with me again tomorrow.’

Swan bowed low. ‘I’ll try.’

He was pleased when several of Idris’s friends offered him casual salutes. As if he was a person. Others remained studiously aloof.

He turned and crossed the courtyard. But Auntie blocked his route with her pony. She smiled at him.

He smiled back at her. It was his habit to smile at any pretty woman who smiled at him.

‘She’d like to have you in her bed,’ Khatun Bengül said. ‘But she doesn’t know how to ask.’

Swan, seldom at a loss for words, had none for this situation.

Khatun Bengül laughed. ‘You flush like a girl,’ she said. ‘Will you come and fly a bird with us another time?’

Swan bowed. ‘Perhaps, if my duties allow. The company was . . . divine.’

‘Divine?’ Khatun Bengül tittered. ‘Now, from one of these young men, that would be blasphemy.’

Swan wasn’t sure whether he’d scored or not. So he smiled, bowed again, and walked out the gate.

Despite feeling utterly smitten, he walked straight into the alley that separated Omar Reis’s palazzo from the next magnificent structure and walked south. He was disappointed that his sense of direction had failed him – he didn’t emerge into the street on which Bessarion’s house was situated. He looked behind him, and at the cross-street. He didn’t see any sign of Yellow Face or Tall Man, as he had christened them.

So he followed the next alley south.

There was Bessarion’s house. It rose three stories above the street, and was surrounded by a high wall. There were outbuildings – a stable, a slave or servant quarters, and perhaps a workshop.

He walked all the way around the compound. The gates were locked. There were beggars living in the arch of the front gate.

He paused.

‘Effendi!’ said one woman. ‘Do not harm us!’

‘Do you speak Greek?’ he asked in that language.

All of their faces brightened. There were four of them – filthy, but well enough fed, he imagined.

‘Whose house is this?’ he asked.

The old woman shrugged. ‘Some dead Frank,’ she said.

‘No infidel lives here?’ he asked.

They looked fearful.

‘Has a Turk taken the house?’ he insisted. He was dressed as a Turk – the word
infidel
could go either way.

‘None yet in this street,’ the old woman said.

She was obviously concealing something.

He dug into his kaftan and produced a silver byzant of some value or other – the Turks hadn’t produced a coinage yet, and Byzantine coins were notoriously debased. But it must have some value.

He tossed it to the old woman. ‘How can I get in?’ he asked.

She looked at the coin.

‘I can come back with janissaries,’ he said.

She looked terrified. ‘Effendi – we live in this gate.’

‘You may continue, for all I care,’ he said.

‘We know how to open the gate,’ she said.

He produced another coin.

But it was all taking too long. And it was late afternoon, and the Turks were hurrying to the little mosque for prayers, and suddenly the once-empty street was full.

‘Perhaps another day,’ he said, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Something felt wrong. He didn’t know what, but something felt wrong.

He walked all the way to the Venetian quarter. He was afraid that he’d be stopped because of his Turkish dress, but no one stopped him. In fact, a janissary in the street saluted him.

It was almost dark by the time he reached the Venetian Quarter.

He sat in a tavern with Giannis, Alessandro and Cesare, and related the events of the day. He left Khatun Bengül out of it.

When he spoke of the spring campaign against Venice, Alessandro swore.

‘I heard the same from some of the Jews,’ Swan said.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Foscari is so focused on the war in Italy, he’s forgotten the Turks and how perfidious they are.’

Giannis agreed.

Swan took a drink of wine. ‘They seem . . . fairly straightforward to me.’ He wanted to say ‘
compared to Italians
’ but he knew the audience was wrong.

Alessandro sighed. ‘If only the bishop were not a complete fool,’ he said. ‘I feel I cannot share this with him.’

Giannis scratched at his hairline. ‘I could perhaps rent a boat. Go to Galata, and inform Ser Marco.’ He shrugged. ‘But I couldn’t come back.’

‘Surely they know?’ asked Swan.

‘Let me speak on behalf of my beloved Signoria,’ Alessandro said. ‘We are a nation of sea merchants, most of whom would sell their mothers as whores to make a profit. Money, and the search for money, has its own blindness. And its own pitiable lack of scruple. If a Venetian thinks he can make a profit . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps some know, but conceal the knowledge. Perhaps others close their minds to the news.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is inconvenient,’ he said.

Giannis spat carefully. ‘In the Morea, we say that the difference between a Turk and a Venetian is that at least the Turk believes in something,’ he said.