The scholar chose to miss the allusion. ‘In the Academy we have talents capable of such … problematic graftings,’ he said. ‘The art of the ancients may be incomparable but we have come to be passably good mimics. I think the death of our Consul of the Venetian Vehme merits some little exertion on our part – even if it’s only artistic, don’t you? Incidentally, did you ascertain who killed him?’
The Knight’s face suddenly became hardened, the speed and ease of transformation suggesting that this was its normal state. ‘It was a pirate,’ he said lightly. ‘We know that much, but not his name. He must be a new arrival in the Middle Sea or else we would have him already.’
‘An alternative explanation might be that he is subtle and full of craft beyond the norm,’ ventured the scholar gently.
‘There is that possibility,’ said the Knight, forcing himself to consider the proposition. ‘But it does not affect the ultimate issue – merely its timing. He will be found, in due course, and made to render full restitution for his crime.’
‘It will be so,’ agreed the scholar. ‘We are enacting a morality play for the benefit of the gods and those generations who are yet to come. Let it be done then to our script and according to virtue.’
‘Amen!’ chorused the Knight. ‘He’s as good as dead.’
‘Goodness, no!’ said Enver Rashi, Pasha of the Ottoman-conquered sanjak of Morea. ‘Quite the contrary!’
He had just informed the Gemistan Platonic scholar that the name of their Venetian brother’s killer was already known to him. The scholar had promptly vowed the murderer’s speedy extinction.
‘Esteemed little brother,’ he said to the puzzled older man, ‘I fear your donkey trek from the Mistra Citadel to my court was partly wasted. Our late companion has already found means of conveying your news to me.’
The scholar, being complete master of his chosen academic field, was little used to radical surprise.
‘This dead … colleague … has told you?’ he stumbled, eyeing the Pasha for signs of mockery or, almost as bad, a trap. The shameless hussy laid out on the couch beside her master in turn lazily surveyed the Greek as if he were some unappetizing carcass.
‘Effectively,’ confirmed the Turk. ‘At least, he permitted me to know.’ As he signalled to the towering Janissary guard by a side door, a bedraggled captive was shoved into the dazzling white reception chamber. ‘This man was the actual conveyance the message took,’ he explained.
This unfortunate, a European of obvious base birth, was well rehearsed. Under the baleful gaze of the Janissary, he recited his tale to the stranger present. ‘I was fishing,’ he said, in what was clearly – and painfully – rote-learnt pigeon Turkish, ‘off Malta where I live.’
‘Lived,’ corrected Enver Pasha. ‘Past tense.’
‘Lived. Then the man – or what was left of a man – rose out of the sea before me and stood there like he was on solid land, or he were Christ upon Galilee.’
The scholar, whose love of Greece and Rome led him to fear and resent Christianity and its founder, daintily curled his lips at such a reference. The Circassian girl, bored beyond measure, yawned and prepared to doze.
‘Then he told me where I was to go, what I was to say and to whom. He promised me great riches if I did as I was bade and damnation if I did not. And so here I am.’
‘And there you go!’ quipped Enver Pasha, capping the fisherman’s speech and indicating with one fat hand that he should be bundled from their presence. ‘The Venetian,’ Enver then gravely advised the scholar, ‘did not forget his duty either side of the grave. He was one of our finest.’
‘Perhaps still is …’ hazarded the scholar.
‘No,’ replied Enver Pasha airily, ‘the sea and its inhabitants do the most horrible things to lifeless flesh. His magic could not counter those sundering influences for ever.’
‘So that is it!’ crowed the old scholar, who knew all too much about the rapid dissolution of the body.
‘Of course,’ answered the Pasha, beaming a smile of white and gold. ‘How else? You must know that the Hermeticum instructs how to instil divine essence into a statue …’
‘I do,’ the scholar confidently affirmed. ‘And thereby we preserve the Pagan pantheon for future days.’
‘Just so. Well, the Venetian had access to a deeper teaching by which the fleeing soul may be chained just a little longer to its prison of meat.’
‘I had no idea!’ gaped the scholar, forgetting considerations of image for a brief moment, such was his amazement.
‘Being so menial in our counsels,’ said the Pasha brutally, ‘we chose not to enlighten you – until it was necessary. The fisherman was instructed to tell me one thing only – the name: Captain Slovo.’
‘But you do not wish me to remove this … grit in our sandal?’ asked the scholar, his private world now all turned topsy-turvy.
‘No,’ said the Pasha, gently stroking the gauze-clad rump of the houri prone beside him. ‘I want you to find him.’
‘May I ask why?’
The Pasha nodded, his hand now moving to an even more intimate role. ‘At your new – as of this moment – level, yes, you may. It transpires, by the strangest of coincidences – in which, as you know, we do not believe – that this Slovo is one of ours. Of all those available for the job, the Venetian found the one pirate in our ranks to be killed by. How odd, how strange, that this man should simultaneously return to our attention and create his own vacancy. He is clearly as favoured as the Venetian was not. In fact, I learn that he is a major investment, a piece of steel of our own forging. That is why, when he is found, I want you also to activate the Papal Chapter, excluding only the deepest buried treasures. It appears Slovo figures in many divergent plans and so, far from killing him, you will bring him home and pave his way.’
‘It shall be so,’ said the scholar and bowed as deeply as his traitorous joints would permit him.
‘It must be so!’ answered the Pasha. ‘Now please leave – amorous instincts are storming the walls of my rational faculties.’
Being a mischievous as well as a learned old man, the scholar turned back after reaching the door to the outer audience chamber. As he’d hoped, proceedings were already well advanced and the houri’s lustrous head was buried deep in the Pasha’s crotch. ‘And the fisherman?’ he asked innocently.
Enver Pasha regained control of his eyeballs and disengaged his intimate accomplice. ‘Service in the galleys of the Sultan seems best,’ he said as evenly as he could. ‘The man is used to a maritime career.’
‘But no riches?’
‘It is possible,’ replied the Pasha, leaning back in anticipation of a professionally choreographed hour or two to come. ‘Once every decade or so, a ship gets in such a desperate position that it frees and arms its galley-slaves. Of those unfortunate ships a few might even go on to win the fight. A rare sea-captain, one whom life has not yet hardened beyond human gratitude, might reward a slave who’d fought, performed mighty deeds of valour, and yet survived. It could just happen … and certainly he had no greater chance of fortune as a Maltese fish-grabber.’ Enver Pasha managed to sound the most reasonable of men. ‘Therefore of what have we deprived him?’
The scholar conceded the point by withdrawing and closing the double doors. He then made haste to leave the Pasha’s Athenian palace since sight of its present state, captured, altered and debauched to Islamic tastes and usage, upset him. Other more worthy feet should be treading the same ground. Perhaps even … his step could have graced that ravished spot. It didn’t bear thinking about he decided as the silk-glorified Janissaries grimly monitored his exit from the premises. Outside, he was careful to avert his gaze from the dishonoured Acropolis above.