Tom Swan and the Head of St George

Volume Five: Rhodes

Christian Cameron

Contents

Cover

Title Page

TOM SWAN AND THE HEAD OF ST GEORGE PART FIVE

The Conqueror’s Ring

Also By Christian Cameron

Copyright

TOM SWAN AND THE HEAD OF ST GEORGE

PART FIVE

The Conqueror’s Ring

The coast of the Morea rolled by, an endless succession of small, excellent harbours cut into tawny rock by the ancient gods of the sea.

The Blessed Saint John cut the water like the slim predator she was, and her oarsmen grunted softly as they pulled the stroke. There was no wind, and after a winter’s voyage from Ancona, wherein the ship was forced to avoid the Venetian possessions in Dalmatia, no wind was taken as a favourable sign by every man aboard.

Thomas Swan, Donat of the Order of Saint John, stood in his short frowzy brown gown by the tiller of the galley and listened to his mentor in all things nautical. A rich Genoese merchant—Messire Drappiero—had taken over the stern cabin, and Fra Tommaso, the captain, had responded by staying on his quarterdeck at all hours. They’d been at sea nineteen days – mostly passing their nights in secluded coves or on icy, windswept beaches, but they’d spent four nights at sea, as well, and Swan had been on deck almost as often as the old man.

It was rather like learning to ride from the Turks. The flow of information was endless, and the expertise of the teacher unquestioned. Swan tried to learn what he could. The cross-staff made sense to him. Constructing a memory palace based on biblical verses to memorise the costal marks was a little more difficult. Attempting to keep the tiller perfectly straight so that he didn’t leave a notch in his wake while the oarsmen toiled away …

‘Notch in your wake,’ the old man said. ‘Have you tried prayer?’

Swan was briefly tempted to tell the old man where he could put his prayer. He hadn’t slept in three days. He didn’t know where the old man got his reserves of energy, but for himself, he was ready for a cup of wine and a woman.

‘Notch in your wake,’ the old man said. ‘Try saying the paternoster. You know it, don’t you?’ the old man asked, and laughed.

He has me pegged, Swan thought bitterly.

He set his shoulders, put the tiller in what he fancied was the best place on his hip, and began reciting the paternoster in his head.

‘Try out loud,’ the old bastard said.

Swan prayed out loud.

‘Now say your whole length of beads. Aloud,’ Fra Tommaso said.

‘Beads?’ Swan asked.

Fra Tommaso guffawed. ‘Here, try mine. You really are the spawn of Satan, are you not?’

The knight’s beads were simple globes of wood strung on plain black linen. His cross at the end was brass. Swan took the beads.

‘Say a paternoster for each bead,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘Notch. In your wake. Look at it. Every time you do that, it costs every man on this ship a little more effort to row the ship back on course. That’s why there is a helmsman. I’ll spare you the allegory. Pray. Out loud.’

Swan began to pray. There was something about the old knight that kept him at it. Perhaps he just hated the pious hypocrite enough to stay with him all day.

Perhaps.

After seven beads, he realised that the knight was no longer on the deck. He fought a vague panic. He’d never been left alone before.

He went back to praying. Out loud.

When the timoneer came and saluted and turned the hourglass, he was on his second time through the beads. He smiled and nodded.

His hips hurt, his hands hurt, and the muscles in his forearms were beyond simple words like ‘hurt’.

By the time he’d said the beads four times, his lower back hurt.

The old knight reappeared like something mechanical, popping up the stern ladder despite a heavy wool robe and a breastplate. He looked at the wake and nodded.

‘That was half a watch,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen worse, boy. Go and have a rest. Don’t use the cabin – our guest is having a fit.’

Swan was not too proud to bend over in public and try to stretch his back. ‘Sweet Jesu – sorry. My back is sore.’

‘Wait a day or two,’ the old man said.

‘Why is Master Drappierro upset?’ Swan asked.

‘He just discovered that when I said I was going to Monemvasia, I meant it,’ the old man said.

Swan risked the after-cabin to get a stool.

‘Do you think the old cretin who commands this vessel is affronting me on purpose, young man? Can you convince him to move us along? Monemvasia? We could make Piraeus in two days. Speak to him, please, my boy.’

These were the first civil words that the man had spoken to him, and Swan was not moved to help, but he nodded as agreeably as he could manage.

He sketched a bow. ‘I’ll make every effort,’ he said.

Drappierro held out a cup of wine. ‘And get me some more wine,’ he said. He paused and raised his head. ‘Please?’

Swan rewarded his attempt with the whole leather cask from the sideboard. He poured the merchant’s cup half full – patted himself on the back for spilling none in the short, choppy sea – and placed the leather keg by Drappierro’s elbow.

The Genoese grunted.

Swan went below into the gloom of the oar deck. The leather covers, intended to keep the icy spray off the oarsmen, were up, and the wind whistled through the oar holes. He went forward past the Genoese ambassador’s party, who were frozen and bitterly unhappy nearest the stern – past all the oarsmen, who had their chests under their benches, complete with coats of carefully oiled mail and broad-brimmed helmets and heavy axes arranged for instant access. Farther forward were the order’s mercenaries, a dozen for Monemvasia and another handful for distant Kos, paid for by the Duke of Burgundy. Beyond them were a handful of tiny cabins, no bigger than a man’s sea chest, where the standing officers – the carpenter and the timoneer and the deck master – all slept. Antoine had very wisely slung a hammock between two of the tiny cabins – doorpost to doorpost – getting for himself a fairly snug space almost four by eight feet.

Swan nodded to Antoine, who looked pained and rolled out of his hammock. ‘Your worship?’ he whined.

‘Stop calling me that,’ Swan insisted. He climbed into Antoine’s warm hammock and went to sleep. Antoine had no duties and no stations, so he slept all the time, or that was what Swan told himself. The truth was that galleys weren’t built for the crew to sleep aboard, and when they had to, men came to blows over sleeping space.

When Swan awoke he could feel the difference in the ship’s motion, and when he went on deck he saw that they were close inshore.

The old knight nodded, eyes and teeth pale in the wintery darkness. ‘You are becoming a sailor,’ he said. ‘You woke when I changed course.’

Swan shrugged and shivered.

Monemvasia towered over them. Some men called it the Gibraltar of Greece, and in truth the rock rose like a pillar of basalt from the angry sea, three hundred yards from shore. Viewed from the deck of a galley, the place looked impregnable.

‘It has never fallen to a siege,’ the old knight said.

He got them in to the quay with the skill of hundreds of repetitions, despite a rising wind and a following sea – the oars came in like the folding wings of a landing bird, and the ship bumped the wooden posts of the pier no harder than a child might hit another child with a stick.