Blood Red Sea

9

A voice said, ‘Yes, it is them. The Venetian embassy.’

‘You are certain?’ said the Janizary captain gruffly. ‘They look like very martial and sword-ready ambassadors.’

‘They went armed,’ said the other. ‘There was necessity. But this is them. They should not be harmed but taken in safety. They came into the city with orders for Dandolo to make peace.’

Nicholas looked up, face begrimed. Blood everywhere, and his neck throbbing. His arm tingled likewise.

Beside the Janizary captain, serving as his translator in this ravaged polyglot city, stood a thin-faced, clever-looking Moor.

Abdul of Tripoli.

‘On your feet,’ said the captain.

As they hauled themselves up and wiped the sweat from their faces, Abdul gave them a surreptitious wink and murmured in English, ‘An eye for an eye.’

They remained expressionless.

The captain looked at him sharply. ‘What tongue was that?’

‘Italian,’ said Abdul in Turkish. ‘But Venetian dialect. An old proverb.’

The captain grunted.

By the beard of the Prophet, thought Abdul to himself, a liar and cheat has to think fast.

‘Your weapons,’ said a Janizary sergeant.

Smith shook his head.

Giustiniani said, ‘Brother John, I order you to surrender your weapon. It may be returned to us after.’

Smith threw his beloved jezail at the sergeant, who caught it smartly. He raised it and admired the perfect barrel, then slung it over his shoulder and smiled. They were chained and marched back through the city towards the Famagusta Gate and the Ottoman camp beyond.

Up a ladder, a drunken Greek dragged down the flag of St Mark and hoisted the Turkish standard.

‘You see why we lost,’ murmured Stanley.

They saw an old woman being beheaded where she knelt in the dust. Old women, beyond work or childbirth, were always regarded as particularly useless booty of war. Then they threw her with other bodies on to a pyre.

Smith, even weaponless and in chains, seemed to bristle visibly with fury.

‘Wait,’ murmured Stanley softly to him, ‘wait. Hold it all in. Our time will come. Now is the time to be strongest of all. To watch all this and do nothing. That takes strength.’

Giustiniani nodded grimly to him too. It was a humiliation almost beyond endurance, yet by a strange fate, they might yet survive the charnel-house of fallen Nicosia.

There was a fire burning in a side street, and they glimpsed a group of Janizaries, wearing expressions of grim disgust, beheading two naked, kneeling Bektasis. Near by they saw a boy of no more than twelve years of age hanging crucified from a wooden gate.

That Lala Mustafa should still regard this hideous sacking of a city as a personal triumph and a great victory told them all they needed to know about the enemy commander.

They halted to watch. Their guards raised their muskets to belabour them onwards, but they stood as stubborn as mules.

A big bearded Janizary waved at the murdered and crucified boy. ‘Get him down!’ And then he rained curses on the dead Bektasis at his feet, and finished by spitting on them.

The Janizary captain glared at his captives, as if angry with them for even witnessing this shame upon the armies of the Sultan.

‘The sack of a city is always a foul thing,’ he growled, ‘and only the lowest can take pleasure in it. But those dogs of Bektasis are nothing but a disgrace to us all.’

Giustiniani said sharply, ‘You cannot unloose such men on a fallen city and not expect carnage. But carnage has a habit of returning on those who commit it.’

The captain said, ‘Walk on,’ and they were jerked forward in their chains.

They were left in a large framed tent surrounded by guards.

‘What happens to us now?’

The captain, still angry and mistrustful of them, grimaced and departed without a word. A little later a black slave brought them a little bread and water.

All night the fires of Nicosia burned, and their hearts burned within them for shame and sorrow.

‘The shame of the survivor,’ murmured Stanley.

On the second day, a small, slender Turk stepped into their tent, flanked by two burly bodyguards who looked like wrestlers, bare to the waist, shaven headed but for nodding topknots. They were too dark skinned for Bulgars. Perhaps Kazakhs or even Tajiks.

The Turk wore a fine silk robe, unspotted by battle. He had darting eyes and a moustache as thin as a blade of grass, and standing in their tent he wrinkled his nose. They lay and sweated, still exhausted, defeated. Their own bloody shirts and boots lay on the ground around them.

‘You fought hard, I see,’ he said. ‘For peaceful ambassadors.’ His voice was very crisp and he spoke fast.

Ottoman intelligence. There was no mistaking it.

Time to sharpen their thoughts. The feel of the rack was in their joints and bones.

Giustiniani got to his feet and bowed, pulling his filthy shirt on over his powerful frame. The others shuffled upright and did likewise.

Giustiniani said, ‘We were cornered in the palace and attacked, even as we tried to urge Governor Dandolo to make peace. Yet we came as ambassadors, not soldiers. My name is Federico da Mosta, at your service.’

The Turk’s eyes narrowed. ‘Ertugul Bey. Most humbly your servant.’

Stanley said, in the fluent Turkish that might be expected of a Venetian ambassador, ‘Be assured, My Lord, that it was bitterly frustrating for us to be so ignored and overruled by the gallant and fearless Governor Dandolo, who so longed to taste the glory of war.’

As Stanley spoke, Nicholas saw his fists clenched so tight behind his back he thought his knuckles might pop.

Ertugul Bey said, ‘Well, though I have no doubt at all that you are ambassadors, you are officially captive for the moment, and indeed a part of that fifth of all captive booty set aside for the Sultan himself.’

‘So now we belong to Selim,’ muttered Smith. ‘There’s a funny twist.’

Giustiniani caught his eye warningly. And Ertugul Bey in turn caught his warning. He said, ‘Now that Nicosia has fallen to us, we hear that the Venetian relief fleet has already turned and sailed for home. Without a shot being fired!’ He smiled. ‘Your masters must have decided that Famagusta, too, is a lost cause.’

He eyed each of them in turn. Not a flicker.

‘If you would release us,’ said Giustiniani, cold to the heart at this appalling news but hiding it with absolute mastery, ‘we would willingly ride on to Famagusta in embassy once more, and persuade them to sue for peace.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said Ertugul Bey. ‘But there are a few more matters to be gone through with you first. There was a Malta standard seen on the walls. And a rumour went round that there were Knights of St John fighting in the palace. An idle rumour, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Giustiniani.

Their inquisitor turned on Mazzinghi like a polecat. ‘Grand Commander de la Valette was a tall man, was he not?’

‘I, I never met him,’ stammered Mazzinghi, ‘but I believe so.’

‘Taller than Commander Piero del Monte?’ Ertugul Bey snapped, still staring at Mazzinghi, ‘would you say, Da Mosta?’

Pietro Giustiniani didn’t miss a beat. ‘I couldn’t say, My Lord. I have not met him, but Del Monte is accounted a fine commander.’

Ertugul Bey whipped round and smiled at him again. A smile more disconcerting than any scowl.

Then he eyed Hodge. Light brown hair, blue eyes, rosy sunburned cheeks. ‘God save the Queen!’ he said in heavily accented English.

They stood in frozen agony, but Hodge merely frowned and shrugged.

Ertugul Bey patted him on the shoulder. ‘Rumours said the knights in Nicosia were English, or perhaps had English among them. Very far from home, no?’

‘And very implausible,’ said Stanley. ‘The Protestant English and the Catholic knights are no friends.’

‘No. Yet the world is very complicated and confused these days, is it not?’

Stanley nodded. ‘That it is.’

‘With spies, traitors and partisans everywhere?’

‘Alas, all too true. One longs for plain dealing.’

Ertugul turned on his heel. ‘But delightful though it is to talk with you, I am needed elsewhere now. Meanwhile you will be cared for with all our customary Ottoman courtesy. We will talk in much more detail later, yes?’ He glanced back. ‘Perhaps I will talk to you each individually? That will be interesting. But meanwhile you will not mind me saying that your odour is strong, as men who have fled from battle. You will have water to wash, better food, drink. We bid you farewell.’

As Ertugul left the tent, they all breathed out.

Large basins of water were brought before the tent, scented with thyme and rosemary. They filed out and washed their hands and faces, their necks, their feet. Even that much felt like luxury.

‘Wash that cut on your neck well,’ said Stanley to Nicholas. ‘Rosemary is good for preventing infection.’

Nicholas had almost forgotten the cut he had received, but remembered it when it stung. It was not a deep cut. Smith had a powder burn or two, and Hodge’s left arm was painfully bruised and swollen from the blow of the cudgel. Smith himself rebandaged Mazzinghi’s head where the Bektasi’s spear-point had cut across his temples. Yet they had survived the fall of Nicosia comparatively unscathed. Enough to fight another day.

A few minutes later, a basket of sweet, fresh-baked white bread rolls was brought to them, some new cheese, and four bottles of fine red wine. No water.

‘Have a single mouthful of wine,’ said Giustiniani quietly to Nicholas, looking longingly at it, ‘and it may cost you your life. You need all your wits about you. Everyone.’

So they ate bread and cheese and thirsted more than ever.

‘The torture’s already begun,’ muttered Smith.