Rogue Sword Page 4
He said merely, “I fear you’ll think I’ve been too much in the company of unbelievers.”
“What else could you do?” responded the Englishman. “I’ve known Turks whom I wished were Christian . . . and, in all honesty, certain Christians whom I would have preferred to be Turks.”
Lucas did not press the matter. He had fallen out of righteous ways. How long since he had even heard a mass? He could not in his heart feel deeply concerned about it. On him, whose childhood had been marred by the clash between the Catholicism of his father’s people and the Orthodoxy of his mother’s, the Cathayan belief that there were many roads to God, or else none at all, had fastened powerfully. Only in the last few years, as he approached an age where the meaning of things overshadowed the things themselves, had he wondered--more and more often--what God truly wanted of men. Nowhere had he found a reasonable answer.
“And now you’re tired of roving, and would return to Venice, eh?” Hugh’s tone grew wistful. He leaned back in his seat and looked at the ceiling with blind eyes. “I can understand that. Sometimes I dream I am in England again, when the hawthorn blooms. I wake laughing. But it is only a dream. Well-a-day, men have offered greater sacrifices than exile.”
Lucas shook his head. He didn’t know why he had thus opened himself to this chance-met foreigner, unless it was that all this had been caged in him unendurably long and the serene slow voice made talking easy.
“That’s the best I can think of to do,” he said. “But I was never happy in Venice. Merry, sometimes, but not happy. I look back and remember all the faces as being hard. And now I hear the signors have closed the membership of the Grand Council and hanged Bocconio who dared protest. So the Republic is become entirely the engine of the merchant princes.” He paused, then blurted, “I can never forget how they oppressed my mother’s people.”
“Perchance you’d rather go to Crete, then?”
“A penniless adventurer, trying to make his way under that outland tyranny?” Lucas’ laugh exploded like a Cathayan firecracker. “Also ... I am not a Greek, either. I’d be even less at home among dull fishermen and peasants than--Oh, let’s talk no more of it. I seek a house to call my own, nothing more. But I will not raise my sons to lick the boots of some overlord, nor my daughters to be carried off as slaves when my home is sacked. Tell me where to find a country with strength and justice.”
Hugh stirred. A shiver went down his gaunt body, his lips moved. Something strong gripped this military monk, Lucas saw, something he wanted to say and could not. The knowledge sent prickles down the younger man’s backbone. The Knights Hospitallers had been a mighty force. For one brief moment, after Acre fell, they alone of Christendom had made a strange alliance with the Tartar Ghazan Khan, and regained Jerusalem. Hugh himself, had stood watch at Our Saviour’s tomb. Then they were driven out again. But they were not men who ever really yielded.
“No,” said Hugh, “there’s nothing in this part of the world to satisfy you.”
Seeking easier conversation, Lucas asked, “What’s this tale you mentioned, about the fighting around Gallipoli?”
“Oh, yes.” The turquoise eyes sharpened. “The news came this morning, early. The Catalans--”
“What?” Lucas glanced up, surprised. “Are the mercenaries Catalonian? I heard of them while I was wandering through Anatolia, of course, but they were called simply Giaours or Franks.”
Hugh shrugged with a touch of humor. “We Europeans are not so important that the rest of the world troubles itself much about telling us apart. Yes, the Grand Company is chiefly Catalan. Do you know their history? No? A tale of increasing discord between them and their Byzantine employers. Finally Michael Paleologus, the co-Emperor, had their leader assassinated and laid siege to them in Gallipoli. So they sent envoys to declare formal war--their eight thousand against the whole East Roman Empire! And Emperor Andronicus had these ambassadors, who had been promised safe conduct, murdered and quartered on their way back. At the same time their admiral and all his people were slain in this city.
“Even with the Alanic horsemen at their walls, the Catalans in Gallipoli sent a small fleet up the Sea of Marmora. It took Perinthos town, butchered the inhabitants, and started back stuffed with gold. But a Genoese convoy heading for Trebizond captured those ships and brought their commander here, where he still lies imprisoned. Meanwhile the force attacking Gallipoli was strengthened.” Hugh’s quiet voice took on a metallic ring. “Cruel they may be, but by the Rood, those Catalans are men! They scuttled the last of their own vessels so there could be no talk of retreat, and stood fast!”
“I’ve heard a little of all this, but paid scant attention,” said Lucas. “The matter didn’t seem important. This Empire is as full of local strife as a rotten apple is of worms. What was today’s news?”
Hugh smiled grimly. “Upsetting. Outnumbered and ill-nourished, the Grand Company marched forth against their besiegers. They slew some thousands, with trifling loss to themselves, and the rest were put to flight.”
Lucas whistled.
“Well, we shall see what befalls,” said Hugh. “Rather, I who must remain here for some weeks yet will see it. You, I think, will soon depart. The merchant convoys will make haste through the narrows now that fighting thereabouts has ceased for the moment.”
“Christian against Christian,” said Lucas. He rubbed his eyes, feeling weariness rise in him. “That’s nothing new. But after all my years among aliens--”
He looked out at sky and water, and murmured,
“I had not thought the world would be so wide,
Nor known all other folk would be so strange.
When seas uncloven met me like a bride,
I had not thought the world would be so wide
And yet so poor in places to abide.
When I returned to my familiar range,
I had not thought the world would be so wide
Nor known all other folk would be so strange.”
“I’ve some acquaintance with minstrelsy,” said Hugh, “but yon triolet I never heard before.”
“No doubt, since I composed the thing. I’m sometimes a poet, for my own amusement.” As if he had released the darkness within himself by speaking it, Lucas felt a return of mirth and strength. Or the cause might simply have been that he remembered Djansha was waiting for him. “I can also name the stars, recite numerous maxims of K’ung Fu-Tze, ride a camel, and remove cockleburs from milady’s spaniel. Now, Brother Hugh, I must go back. But you’ve been a true friend; so, since you’ve told me your besetting vice, you may first trounce me in a game or two of chess.”
Chapter III
The Venetian merchant skippers did indeed seize this chance to depart. At sunrise of the second day following, they rounded Europa Point and stood out to the Marmora, a combined fleet whose member convoys would go off toward their separate destinations on the other side of the strait.
All that day they rowed. Constantinople slowly fell behind, first the walls topped by her many domes, and a ringing of bells which followed the ships far across the water as if sad and anxious to be remembered; then a smudge on the sky; at last, nothing. To port the waves glittered and chuckled, a gay noise under the creak and chunk of the oars. To starboard rose the Thracian hills, green in the young year. Towns and villages were passed, elegant estates, castles, farms and plantations; this land seemed richly at peace.
But the only sail was a strange red one in the distance, which had the look of a Turkish pirate. Every villa stood empty. Armed men paced all castle battlements. Late in the afternoon, Lucas spied smoke rising thick from a ridge. Something had been fired--by Catalan raiders?
“This wind is good,” said Djansha. It whipped a loose lock of her braided hair across the broad clear brow. “Why do they not raise the sails? There were sails up most of the way from Azov to Constantinople.”
“But that was a single convoy, in which all ships were exactly alike,” Lucas pointed out. “Here are many sorts together.
Given sail, the smaller and faster craft would outrun the heavier, and we’d all become subject to attack.” He wrinkled his nose. “The breeze is useful all the same, to keep the air somewhat fresh on deck. I’d hate to be downwind of our oarsmen.”
She laughed, even at so poor a jest, and squeezed his arm. He let his own hand slide down her back until he clasped her waist. She leaned against him. Wide-eyed, she continued to stare at the passing scene.
Their two days together in Constantinople had been happy, Lucas thought. Not that they could talk much, since he knew no Circassian and she had little Genoese. But she was quick to learn from him--even though he was also working to convert her to the Venetian dialect--and already he could speak with her about more than the simplest things.
Anyhow, there were other languages than words. The way she cleaned and packed his gear, stood up at his entry until he pulled her down beside him, made a wry face at the hostel food and thereafter brought him meals she had prepared herself: this told him a great deal. As they walked about the city, her awe and pleasure, her sheer delight when he bought her a few cheap dresses, needed no explication. And finally, when they returned, her supple, fervent body in his embrace was enough to think about.
There was more than the famous handsomeness of the race to make Circassians much sought after on the slave market. Those tribesmen raised their daughters to be the opposite of their own fierce selves: sweet-tempered, skilled in every household art, submissive to the man who got them. But not spirit-broken. Unwed girls were gay, flirtatious creatures, and no doubt the wife of many a blustering warrior was the real power in the household. Well aware of the demand, Circassian fathers often sold their girls, though chiefly for Turkish harems. Djansha herself, however, had been captured when the Pshi, petty prince or warlord, of the Abbats, swooped down upon her own Chipakou in one of those tribal wars which the slave trade helped stimulate. She had seen her father and a brother slain, but they had fallen, sword in hand, with dead men at their feet. She was brought to Azov and sold to the Genoese, who kept her over the winter and then resold her to Gasparo Reni.
But all those dealers, Abbat, Genoese, Venetian, were after gold rather than girls. An unscarred virgin Circassian was worth far too much for anyone to molest her. She had been instructed in language to increase her value, but nothing else happened. In that long winter’s dullness, she had formed friendships with other slave girls; then in spring, she was taken from them. She had expected to continue to Cyprus and end as the concubine of a Frank or Turk; the latter, she hoped, for they were better liked in the Caucasus and Islamic law gave considerable freedom to any woman who had borne a child. Instead, a sniggering Byzantine dandy looked her over and arranged for her delivery to his house; and Gasparo had told her that afterward she would probably be resold to a bordello.
Small wonder, thought Lucas, that she turned so willingly to him. Half her ardor must be a flight from nightmare. And yet it was an honest passion. Once, when she thought he was still asleep, she had knelt, smiling, on the pallet and very gently stroked his hair.
She looked about the crowded galley deck. The passengers who milled and chattered, waving their arms, hawking and spitting, cracking fleas, swigging from leather bottles, snoring in the scuppers, were chiefly Levantine. But that meant a hundred nations, from thick-bearded Armenian mountaineer to shaven Athenian trader, from half-savage Vlach to half-civilized Bulgar.
“Will we be long at sea?” she inquired.
“Two or three weeks, I should guess,” replied Lucas.
She grimaced. “Never alone?”
“Does that matter?” he asked, a little surprised. Since leaving Cathay he had almost lost the habit of privacy: which was uncommon in all events, even in Venice.
“Well, you and I--” She flushed and hurried on, “I mean, at home ... the nights were still . . . and trees, many trees, green everywhere--” Her vocabulary failed her. But Lucas could imagine.
He too had seen her mountains, though from afar, their snowpeaks floating high and holy in the sky. He had also traveled beneath leafy arches, and watched sunflecks dance among anemones, and heard a living quietness ended by birdsong. He had visited sacred groves, where a rill tinkled into a pool that gave the sky back its color and its clouds, and sunlight went like laughter through the birches. He remembered a cliff top overlooking vastness; and he remembered rough, warm hospitality among mountaineer tribes. And then he remembered the hut of his boyhood, and his, mother crooning over the newest baby’s cradle.
He looked away from her. After a while he said, “Yes, you are right. If possible, someday, would you wish to return home?”
She drew a gasp, and her answer was delayed. “You are kind, my lord. I have no words to thank you. It would be good to see my land again. But only to see it. My clan are scattered, their power broken. At best I might hope to become the second wife of some hokotl!’ Tossing her head: “My father was an uork. No, I will dwell where you go, Lucas.”
He felt a little taken aback, though for the present such a desire made enjoyable traveling. However--She saved him from further thought by facing aft, raising her arms, and chanting in the Adygei language. When he asked what that was for, she answered naively, “I called upon Seosseres to give us good winds and smooth waters, that we may soon reach the place you want to be. I will give Seosseres a sheep if he helps us. Will you buy a sheep? We can eat most of it ourselves. The gods only want certain parts. If they’re too far away to have heard me, though, then you must call on the gods living closer by. I do not know their names.”
“Holy saints!” Lucas crossed himself and looked around to make sure she had not been overheard. “Ah . . . such things are more difficult in these parts. Best you say nothing about gods. I’ll have a priest explain things to you at journey’s end.”
“What? Can you venture out to sea with no sacrifices? I did not know my lord was so great a wizard! “
“Let’s teach you some more Venetian,” he said hastily. At sundown the ships dropped anchor. So large a fleet could not very well sail these waters after dark, even though the moon was nearly full. Also, however often they took relays, the oarsmen were exhausted. They came up on deck for supper and air: mostly Sclavonians, hired from Venice’s Dalmatian possessions, dark half-naked men who shimmered with sweat and sat staring empty-eyed until they soon went below to sleep. The deck passengers composed themselves where they might best fit, rolled in their blankets among bollards and coils and their own disorderly belongings. They were a dense, noisy mass. Lucas was kept awake for a long time.
In part, that was due to annoyance. He had already had more of a fancy for cleanliness than the ordinary European, and his stay among well-scrubbed Cathayans had reinforced it. He would have to live like a pig on this voyage. The best he could do was change his day clothes for a robe. All his garments were shabby. In prosperous moments, he thought wistfully, he had worn rainbow-colored silks. Yes, and enjoyed some noble foods and wines. He had conversed with philosophic men; hung his chamber with calligraphic scrolls or a delicate ink-wash drawing; ridden horses so beautiful that the sight of them caught at his throat; enjoyed some darlings of concubines--well, on that score he had no present complaint. But poverty and exile were acrid in the mouth. Was it not worth kowtowing to Venetian grandees and forgetting how they dealt with their Cretan subjects, to have a house of his own?
I could have stayed with the Cathayans, or the Turks, or the wise Arabs in Bokhara, he thought. They all liked me. I might have accomplished great things among them. But they were never quite my people. So I came back, and found that here they are not my people, either. Not any longer.
Djansha lay gently breathing by his side. Gradually the grumbles and snores of the others faded, until at last he could almost listen to the silence. He got up and walked to the rail.
The galley was dark, barred with moonlight. He could see how the moon made a trembling bridge on the water; but that was interrupted by the other ships. The lanthorns hung at thei
r poops burned like strewn stars. A couple of lights moved on the water, somebody going from one vessel to the next in a tender. The shore was blackness shouldering against a deep purple sky. Immensely far off, a watchfire made a single red spark. Lucas wondered who sat beside it. The moon drowned out many stars, but he recognized old friends, Arcturus, Vega, Polaris, the Twins, and white Venus.
Sharp as a sword, he remembered ibn Yakoub in Bokhara, gray beard and kindly eyes, the ruinous tower where a grandfather imam and a Christian boy forgot all else as they tracked the planets across heaven. Dear God, he had been young then! And, for those few months, drunken with discovery! If he could get a house, he would build a turret on it and go up there at night with quadrant and astrolabe, a silly little ant happily peering toward the throne of the Maker.
But Venice’s air was thick.
Wind lulled in the rigging, the timbers creaked and wavelets went lap-lap-lap against the hull. A louder noise recalled him to earth. Squinting across the water, he saw that the rowboat had left one galley and proceeded to another. Voices drifted to him. He couldn’t quite make out words, but he gathered that the man being ferried wanted a Jacob’s ladder let down so he could come aboard and see the captain. The captain was not to be awakened, sir. Oh, yes, he was. ... In the end, the man climbed up and stillness returned. Lucas yawned, incurious about what message went traveling from ship to ship. He was a mere passenger. His own vessel--a pleasure boat, at least--yes, someday he would have that too, if only--Well, he should be able to sleep now.
He fumbled his way among sprawled bodies to the place near the poop that he had claimed for himself and Djansha. Here it was totally lightless. He crawled back under the blanket they shared over a straw pallet.