The bishop narrowed his eyes.
Most of the embassy were holding their breath.
‘The Sultan has arranged for some slaves to be waiting for you outside. In recognition of the Pope’s magnificent presents, he is willing to allow you to free five.’
Every Turk in the hall laughed.
The laughter was spontaneous and unforced, and even the Venetian and the Florentine felt it.
Mehmet smiled benevolently at them.
Omar Reis looked at Swan.
It took an effort of will for Swan to keep his hand off his sword-hilt.
The Turks left the hall faster than they had entered. The sipahis remained, standing nonchalantly around the perimeter, yet unmoving as carved stone.
Alessandro looked around. ‘Whatever is waiting for us outside, it will be humiliating and cruel. And outside the gates may be worse. Your Excellency, I propose that you choose the first five slaves we see – so that we may lose no time. Harden your heart and let us move.’
The bishop nodded.
‘Let me also recommend that all three of you gentlemen strip your robes and hand them to our sailors.’ He nodded to the bishop. ‘Your Excellency, I can protect you better if you are not a slow, stiff, obvious target.’
The elder of the two interpreters said, ‘You are making a mistake. If the Turks can pretend they didn’t recognise him—’
Alessandro shrugged. ‘I know that argument. I have my own.’ They had arrived at the great entrance doors. ‘Ready, Excellency?’
The bishop was so pale he might have been a corpse. ‘Do you really think that . . .’
Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes. We will be attacked. Probably by an angry, anti-Christian mob, in the street.’
The bishop’s hands trembled. ‘God’s will be done,’ he said.
The doors opened.
The great courtyard of the palace was full – full to bursting. Swan thought at first glance that there must be two thousand men and women there. Maybe twice as many.
They were, for the most part, naked, or wore a single garment. Old and young, they shared deeply lined, exhausted faces and scars. They had been deprived even of hope. They stood, abject. Families huddled together, or perhaps they were just loose associations of men and women formed in bondage.
A voice from one of the palace towers called out in Greek. ‘Christians! Your bishop will now select five of you to be freed. Present yourselves to him!’
Alessandro eyed the crowd.
Swan said, ‘We’ll never get through.’
Alessandro smiled. ‘Oh yes we will.’ He looked around one more time. The great gates on the far side of the courtyard were opening.
He looked tired, and his mouth was set very hard.
The slaves began to shuffle towards them. The press was instantly very thick, and Swan stumbled back.
‘Tell them they are all free, and should go through the gate.’ Alessandro spoke quietly, and every word sounded as if it was forced out of him.
‘There will be a stampede!’ Swan said.
‘Yes,’ Alessandro said. ‘Do it.’
The bishop was hanging on Alessandro’s arm. The Venetian marines were stringing their bows.
In Greek, Swan roared, ‘All of you are free! The bishop says so! Go – quickly! Out the gates! Go!’
The slaves stopped pressing in.
There was a moment . . .
Then there was a roar, or rather, a deep murmur, as the slaves began to comprehend what had been said. At the back of the crowd, slaves were running for the gate.
Archers began to loose shafts at them from the towers. And then the screams began.
‘Forward!’ roared Alessandro. ‘Cut your way through if you must.’
Swan still had his helmet under his arm. Now it seemed like a foolish liability. He wasn’t going to put it on his head.
He drew his sword.
The bishop had stopped. He was trying to shepherd five slaves. He touched them, grabbed their hands . . .
One of them took a Turkish arrow in the gut. The man sat abruptly, legs spread, the arrow sticking out of his back. He fell forward a little, and blood ran out of his mouth, but he didn’t scream. He just looked . . . surprised.
The bishop began to weep.
He was holding the hand of a little girl, and trying to drag her along, and a woman – her mother? – followed them, reaching for the girl.
An arrow struck her, and she fell.
Swan swept the little girl up and held her in his helmet arm, and ran for the gate.
No arrows touched him.
The bishop grabbed another child and dragged him along behind. The child screamed. The child’s father called ‘Run, run!’ in Greek.
Looking back from the gate, Swan could see very few bodies, and a great deal of screaming panic.
They ran through the gate, and out into the main thoroughfare of the northern part of the city – almost like a country road, so far from the inhabited core.
But there was no Turkish ambush. A dozen mounted Turks were quietly rounding up the slaves, but they offered no violence to the embassy. They did smile, and laugh, and point.
Alessandro didn’t stop moving. ‘This way,’ he called, and they were off, across a rubble-strewn field where once there had been a set of noblemen’s houses. The child sitting on Swan’s arm seemed to weigh ten stone, and he cursed the useless helmet. He was breathing like a bellows.
The mounted Turks watched them go, laughing and calling things.
They went almost a quarter-mile across the rubble, down old streets with no buildings left on either side, and through a great field that looked as if it had been recently burned.
A great semicircle of churches, their gold or bronze domes rising above buildings, tenements and rubble, marked the edge of the inhabited city, still another quarter of a mile away. To the north, behind them, a column of mounted Turks trotted out of the Blacharnae Palace.
‘We’ve come away with nine slaves,’ Alessandro said. He motioned for them to stop, and everyone – armoured or not – stood, virtually unable to speak, breathing like so many armourer’s bellows.
‘If I escape this, I will burn a hundred candles of white wax on the altar of Saint Mark,’ panted one of the young Venetian men-at-arms.
Cesare simply leaned over and threw up. He did it neatly, wih the economy of the heavy drinker, and then he spat.
Swan had a water bottle, and he passed it to his friend, who raised it in a mock toast. ‘When I die, see that Donna Lucrescia has all my love, and give my money to the poor.’ He stood bent over, and his breaths came in great gasps.
Alessandro was watching the Turks to the north. Ahead of them, at the edge of the suburbs, there was a low roar like distant surf.
Alessandro rubbed his chin. ‘I’m going to assume, for the sake of speed, that you ignored my advice and took some petty revenge on Omar Reis.’
Swan looked at the Turks. ‘I—’
Alessandro raised a hand, forestalling argument. ‘I have misspent my life, wasted my patronage, squandered my father’s money, and lived a life steeped in sin. Despite which, I’m not sure I ever managed to be so complete a dangerous, ignorant fool as you.’ He shrugged. ‘Although I admit that you perform these little miracles of idiocy with a certain sprezzatura.’
‘What did you do?’ gasped Cesare. ‘Sleep with his wife?’
‘Daughter,’ said Swan, with some pride mixed with regret.
Cesare laughed. ‘I’m so glad I’m about to die in a great crusade – a true reflection of the state of the faith, by God! We are not a handful of Christians standing against the horses of Islam! We’re a dozen dupes of Thomas Swan’s love affair!’ He laughed.