Idris laughed. ‘Tell him my father will have his guts ripped out of his fat stomach if he stops you.’
Idris meant these words as a joke, but they chilled Swan.
Idris leaned closer. ‘Listen – you know this is all a sham? Don’t you? In the spring, my father will lead an army into the Morea and we will take everything Venice has. It’s not even a secret.’
Swan struggled to maintain his composure.
‘Don’t let it come between us,’ Idris said. He smiled. ‘I treasure you. Come ride with me again tomorrow.’
Swan bowed low. ‘I’ll try.’
He was pleased when several of Idris’s friends offered him casual salutes. As if he was a person. Others remained studiously aloof.
He turned and crossed the courtyard. But Auntie blocked his route with her pony. She smiled at him.
He smiled back at her. It was his habit to smile at any pretty woman who smiled at him.
‘She’d like to have you in her bed,’ Khatun Bengül said. ‘But she doesn’t know how to ask.’
Swan, seldom at a loss for words, had none for this situation.
Khatun Bengül laughed. ‘You flush like a girl,’ she said. ‘Will you come and fly a bird with us another time?’
Swan bowed. ‘Perhaps, if my duties allow. The company was . . . divine.’
‘Divine?’ Khatun Bengül tittered. ‘Now, from one of these young men, that would be blasphemy.’
Swan wasn’t sure whether he’d scored or not. So he smiled, bowed again, and walked out the gate.
Despite feeling utterly smitten, he walked straight into the alley that separated Omar Reis’s palazzo from the next magnificent structure and walked south. He was disappointed that his sense of direction had failed him – he didn’t emerge into the street on which Bessarion’s house was situated. He looked behind him, and at the cross-street. He didn’t see any sign of Yellow Face or Tall Man, as he had christened them.
So he followed the next alley south.
There was Bessarion’s house. It rose three stories above the street, and was surrounded by a high wall. There were outbuildings – a stable, a slave or servant quarters, and perhaps a workshop.
He walked all the way around the compound. The gates were locked. There were beggars living in the arch of the front gate.
He paused.
‘Effendi!’ said one woman. ‘Do not harm us!’
‘Do you speak Greek?’ he asked in that language.
All of their faces brightened. There were four of them – filthy, but well enough fed, he imagined.
‘Whose house is this?’ he asked.
The old woman shrugged. ‘Some dead Frank,’ she said.
‘No infidel lives here?’ he asked.
They looked fearful.
‘Has a Turk taken the house?’ he insisted. He was dressed as a Turk – the word infidel could go either way.
‘None yet in this street,’ the old woman said.
She was obviously concealing something.
He dug into his kaftan and produced a silver byzant of some value or other – the Turks hadn’t produced a coinage yet, and Byzantine coins were notoriously debased. But it must have some value.
He tossed it to the old woman. ‘How can I get in?’ he asked.
She looked at the coin.
‘I can come back with janissaries,’ he said.
She looked terrified. ‘Effendi – we live in this gate.’
‘You may continue, for all I care,’ he said.
‘We know how to open the gate,’ she said.
He produced another coin.
But it was all taking too long. And it was late afternoon, and the Turks were hurrying to the little mosque for prayers, and suddenly the once-empty street was full.
‘Perhaps another day,’ he said, turned on his heel, and walked away.
Something felt wrong. He didn’t know what, but something felt wrong.
He walked all the way to the Venetian quarter. He was afraid that he’d be stopped because of his Turkish dress, but no one stopped him. In fact, a janissary in the street saluted him.
It was almost dark by the time he reached the Venetian Quarter.
He sat in a tavern with Giannis, Alessandro and Cesare, and related the events of the day. He left Khatun Bengül out of it.
When he spoke of the spring campaign against Venice, Alessandro swore.
‘I heard the same from some of the Jews,’ Swan said.
Alessandro shook his head. ‘Foscari is so focused on the war in Italy, he’s forgotten the Turks and how perfidious they are.’
Giannis agreed.
Swan took a drink of wine. ‘They seem . . . fairly straightforward to me.’ He wanted to say ‘compared to Italians’ but he knew the audience was wrong.
Alessandro sighed. ‘If only the bishop were not a complete fool,’ he said. ‘I feel I cannot share this with him.’
Giannis scratched at his hairline. ‘I could perhaps rent a boat. Go to Galata, and inform Ser Marco.’ He shrugged. ‘But I couldn’t come back.’
‘Surely they know?’ asked Swan.
‘Let me speak on behalf of my beloved Signoria,’ Alessandro said. ‘We are a nation of sea merchants, most of whom would sell their mothers as whores to make a profit. Money, and the search for money, has its own blindness. And its own pitiable lack of scruple. If a Venetian thinks he can make a profit . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Perhaps some know, but conceal the knowledge. Perhaps others close their minds to the news.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is inconvenient,’ he said.
Giannis spat carefully. ‘In the Morea, we say that the difference between a Turk and a Venetian is that at least the Turk believes in something,’ he said.
‘Blessed Virgin,’ Swan said.
‘You must go,’ Alessandro said. ‘I cannot – my absence would be obvious. Swan would be missed by his Turkish friends, and so far, he’s the only one of us to see the cardinal’s house.’
Giannis finished his wine. ‘I’ll be in Galata before the sun rises,’ he said.
‘It’s after curfew!’ Alessandro said.
‘Give me your Turkish clothes,’ Giannis said.
Swan thought for a moment. ‘I love that kaftan,’ he said, but Giannis, who hated everything Turkish, assumed he was kidding.
At nightfall, the janissary at the gate sent for Swan. When he presented himself, the janissary bowed, and handed him an ornate parchment. A firman. A pass, signed in Persian script, for Thomas Swan, Prince of Britain.
At daybreak, an African servant handed a note into the Venetian quarter asking Swan to come for a ride in the countryside. The note was unsigned. On the back, in neat Italian, it said, ‘Come in secret.’ Swan smiled to himself.
‘Cover me with the bishop?’ he asked Alessandro.
Alessandro nodded. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was a woman involved.’
Swan wondered how it was that this foppish Italian could read his mind. ‘No,’ he said, lying.
However, being besotted with Khatun Bengül, whose deep brown-black eyes had occurred in every dream he could remember from the night before, didn’t prevent Swan from leaving the Venetian quarter with all the care his youth had taught him.
First, he no longer had Turkish clothes.
Secondly, he didn’t want his watchers – Yellow Face and Tall Man – to see him at Idris’s palazzo. Once they had followed him there, they would watch the place.
It was early. He was in European clothes, and he took a dagger under his doublet. Then, before the side streets were full of vegetable stalls, he climbed up on the wall that separated the Venetian quarter from the Amalfian quarter, and without too much thought, jumped down inside. He walked across the Amalfian quarter, drew some cautious stares, and duplicated his efforts, jumping on to an awning in the Pisan quarter and receiving a torrent of abuse from a young man with a Florentine accent. He mollified the man by buying an apple.