‘All of which we fully approved of,’ said the Vehmist. ‘Likewise the Town Governorship that followed and the condottiere service in Thessaly. Banking in Ravenna was something of a departure, but a welcome one, a valuable broadening of experience. You see, Admiral Slovo, all our judgements were made after the event – we were hard pressed to keep up with each new incarnation and your name was rarely off our trace list. You certainly got to see Christendom, didn’t you?’
‘Something kept me moving,’ agreed Slovo. ‘Forever in search.’
‘Of what?’
‘I can’t recall, actually,’ answered the Admiral. ‘That Slovo is lost and gone. It’s like speaking of a different person.’
The Vehmist appeared to accept this. ‘The leap from banking to piracy took us by surprise, I must confess. That radical departure – and its suddenness – meant we lost you once more.’
‘In fact,’ said Slovo, ‘there are closer affinities between the two professions than cursory thought suggests. Piracy seemed a logical extension to what I had been doing – and a more honest way of life.’
The Welshman again deferred to the older man’s judgement. ‘By the merest stroke of fortune,’ he said, ‘it was that choice that caused our paths to cross again, never to part. Only then could we closely study what we had created – and scarce forbear to cheer!’
‘Oh,’ said Admiral Slovo, ‘you mean when I had my swimming lessons …’
The Year 1486
‘SWIMMING LESSONS: After a sad and lonely childhood, cast as an orphan into the wicked world, I discover my vocation and philosophy of life. Piracy suits me very well.’
‘No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ll have to walk home.’
The Venetian nobleman looked down at Admiral Slovo and raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Well, yes, I know,’ explained Slovo to the man poised on the deck rail. ‘Call me faithless if you like …’
‘You are faithless,’ obliged the Venetian. ‘You promised me my life.’
‘Agreed,’ conceded the Admiral, folding his arms and leaning convivially against the rail, beside the Venetian’s feet. ‘But that was then and this is …’
‘Now. Yes, I quite see,’ interrupted the nobleman. ‘And I must say I take your decision personally, you know.’
‘Oh dear, I do wish you wouldn’t,’ replied Slovo, reasonably. ‘Put yourself in my shoes …’
Some of the crew, who had nothing better to do than watch the show, found grounds for bestial amusement at this aside but the Admiral silenced them with a glance.
‘What I mean,’ he continued, ‘is that despite doubtless genuine grounds for grievance, you are refusing to see the problem in the round. His Holiness and your Serene Republic are nominally at peace at this juncture. It would not do, therefore, for me to return to Ostia bearing the sole survivor of a forbidden piratical venture, would it now?’
They both turned to look at the nearby once-grand galley, now afire and sinking; its crew (bar one) dead in battle or by subsequent murder, still aboard.
‘Come to think of it,’ the Admiral mused, ‘my commission from His Holiness even precludes attacks on fellow Christians. Venetian though you may be, I assume that you come within that category …?’ And when the nobleman shrugged, Slovo added, ‘Well, there you are then, you see the quandary my greed-inspired oath puts me in.’
The Venetian looked underwhelmed by the Admiral’s dilemma. ‘You just want my library, that’s what it is,’ he stated calmly. ‘I saw you leafing through it with lust in your eyes. You wish for undisputed title.’
Admiral Slovo admitted the possibility with a shift of the shoulders. ‘Well, that may have something to do with it, but I’d thank you to keep your voice down. Bibliomania does not accord with my professional image. The crew might nurture false notions, requiring bloody suppression.’
‘That library has been generations in the acquiring,’ said the Venetian firmly. ‘I’m not giving it up.’
Admiral Slovo stood up and stretched. ‘I’m rather afraid you are,’ he said. ‘To prepare yourself for Paradise, your books and heart must surely part. Now off you go, there’s a good chap.’
The Venetian glowered at the half circle of buccaneers below him but realized that his position was futile. ‘I do not consider this conversation to be at an end,’ he said equably. The pirates smiled. Then, with as much dignity as could be mustered, he turned and walked off the plank into the Mediterranean sea.
‘Stop oars!’
The strokemaster’s roar echoed off into silence. All the crew were shifting in their appointed stations and straining to see.
‘Keep to your places, if you please,’ said Admiral Slovo to his Bosun. As intended, he relayed the command to the crew in louder and coarser terms. There was a just acceptable lowering of the level of frenzy.
‘Look, there he is!’ shouted the look-out in the stern. ‘Out there!’
Slovo strode to join him and peered into the distant blue. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded eventually. ‘How interesting.’
The Bosun, who had no other name known to man, had for career’s sake emphasized the animal within but in fact he retained a worthwhile intellect and was invited to join them.
‘Can’t be sure at that distance,’ he barked. ‘It’s blurred – might be jetsam.’
‘I think not,’ said the Admiral authoritatively. ‘I have never heard of swimming jetsam. Look, one can see the rise of an arm.’
‘There’s any number of overboards in the sea,’ replied Bosun indefatigably. ‘It don’t mean it’s our man.’
Slovo nodded his tentative agreement. ‘I don’t see how it can be the Venetian either. He could hardly have lasted two days in the water. On the other hand, it does look awfully like him. If only he’d come a little closer so that his face was less … indistinct.’
Bosun looked shocked at the expression of such a wish. ‘Let me go and get my crossbow, Admiral,’ he asked. ‘That’ll sort him!’
‘I think not,’ answered Slovo slowly. ‘If it’s a mere lost sailor, the sea will soon deal with the matter. Should, however, it be the Venetian, I cannot but feel that our weaponry will be of little avail. If we must be pursued by a revenant, I’d prefer it not to have a crossbow bolt in its brow.’
Bosun was thinking this one through when, with a voice of joy, he noted that the figure had gone. In an explosion of relief, the crew threw discipline to the winds and scrambled to line the sides. No one had the heart to reprimand them. In a silence broken only by the call of gulls, everyone searched the waves for their obscure and elusive companion of the last day and night.
‘Down to Hell and fare ye well,’ said Bosun at last, when all agreed that sea and sky were all there was to see.
The celebration was spoilt by the sound, starting low but rising to a thunderous roar, distorted by its passage through water and hull, of knocking from beneath the ship.
After a further day of being shadowed at the very edge of sight, quite regardless of whatever turn of speed that wind and oar could produce, Admiral Slovo decided to head for land. For all he cared, the dead Venetian could follow him and hammer on his ship for eternity. Alas, however, the crew were not so philosophical. Even Bosun, who feared neither God nor State (not fully understanding the power of either) was getting edgy. Slovo, who maintained control by a record of success and the occasional exemplary death, knew when not to push his luck too far.