Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople

Swan sneezed.

Later, dressed in an ornate robe and curly slippers, Swan leaned back on comfortable cushions.

‘So you are an agent of the cardinal,’ Simon said.

‘Perhaps,’ Swan said. ‘My only orders are to retrieve his library. Can you help me?’

Simon rocked his head from side to side. ‘Perhaps. It is risky. Everything is watched right now. You know that a great many of the Christian relics have gone missing – from Hagia Sophia, from the monasteries, from private houses. The Sultan is furious.’

‘None of my concern. I’m here for books. When I’m done, you may have the house,’ Swan said.

Simon made a face. ‘Is it yours to give?’

‘Of course,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll have your brother send you a deed.’ He shrugged. ‘A palace near the Hippodrome for some information and a little smuggling . . .’

Simon lay back and drank quaveh.

‘Let me understand this,’ he said. ‘I get you to the house from the Venetian quarter. You go inside and prepare the items you want to ship. I ship them to Galata for you, and I keep the cardinal’s house.’

Swan nodded.

It was an excellent plan, and the only hitch he could see was that Simon planned to sell him out. He could see it on the man’s face. Damn it.

Why are people so greedy?

‘How long will you be?’ Simon asked.

‘At least a week,’ Swan answered, an utter lie. In his head, he’d already discarded Simon.

‘That long?’ Simon said. ‘Why?’

‘It will take me that long to figure out what to take and what to leave,’ Swan said, embroidering as he went. ‘I’ll contact you when we’re ready. You get us from the Venetian quarter to the cardinal’s house. I’ll take care of the rest.’ In fact, in his head, he was already moving on to his next plan, but he needed to part amicably from this man before he chose to betray Swan immediately.

He and Peter said their goodbyes, and slipped out of the Jewish quarter at the guard change. They were followed.

‘He’s going to sell us,’ Swan said.

Peter sighed. ‘I wondered.’

‘We have to disappear. Luckily, we can.’ Swan took a deep breath. ‘Let’s buy food.’

They walked back towards the Venetian quarter. Swan’s fear at every corner was that the two men following them – Simon’s men – would sell them to the Turks on the spot, but they made it to the market, and purchased meat pies. And then they cut across the ruins of the old Forum – down the steep sides of the collapsed fountain, and into the sewers. No one following them had had a sightline. Or so Swan had to hope.

An hour later, they were in the underground cisterns, eating meat pies made of the same parts of the cow and the pig that were used in meat pies in London. There was more pepper, but the taste was strangely familiar.

Peter looked at the apparently endless arches receding into the distance. ‘This was built – by men?’

Swan slapped him on the back. ‘I’m glad you like it. We’ll be down here for a long time.’

As it proved, it took them two days and a night to find Bessarion’s house and explore the system. They were involved in necessary adventures, including the theft of a ladder from a monastery and carrying it underground and above ground for almost a mile; another theft of rope, and a tedious amount of sneaking through alleys, dropping coloured cloth through the gratings and then hurrying below to see where, exactly, they were.

Once, Swan had to hope his Greek was sufficient, and went above to purchase supplies. He walked carefully, watched carefully, and dealt with the deafest old woman he could find in the main market by the Hippodrome.

When they were sure – reasonably sure – that they had the right well, Swan lay on the walkway, on a stolen blanket, and drew a map of every part of the sewers and cisterns as he knew them. As far as he could see, the canals were underground cisterns carrying water from the aqueducts to supply the Hippodrome and the palace quarter and any houses lucky enough to be along the major water routes. Great houses simply had a well cover that opened into a shaft that ran down into the cistern. Some houses had private cisterns – and there was more than one cistern system, and they didn’t all link up. Or rather, in the time he had, Swan couldn’t see where they linked, and he and Peter often had to cross an alley or a small hill above ground, carrying all their tools, stumbling, lost in a darkened city.

The main canals, or cisterns, had iron rings every so often, and nautical bollards at intersections, clearly for tying small boats against the current. Swan couldn’t discern whether there were still maintenance crews working. As far as he could see, the newest stonework was two hundred years old or older, and there were four major cave- ins unrepaired.

‘We need a boat,’ he said, as he sketched his map.

Peter shook his head. ‘People built this?’ he said again. He found wonder in everything – the grafitti, the underground mosaics, the bronze fittings where no one could see them. ‘No one is this rich.’

‘The old Romans were this rich,’ Swan said.

‘Imagine fresh water in every house,’ Peter said.

‘We need a boat,’ Swan insisted.

‘I’ll just steal one on the waterfront and carry it through the streets, shall I?’ Peter asked.

Swan stopped drawing, the charcoal pinched in his fingers. ‘Mary and Joseph,’ he said. ‘There must be a water gate.’

Peter’s head came up. He grinned.

‘I know who can get us a boat,’ Swan said. ‘Let’s cast east.’

It took the rest of the day, but they found that the eastern branch of the sewer did indeed run down all the way to the sea. It ended at a grate like a portcullis, strong iron carefully wrought. The water ran out into the sea.

Swan’s legs hurt from climbing and crawling, but he looked at the sea with infinite satisfaction. ‘Thalatta, Thalatta,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Peter asked.

‘That’s our way out, my friend.’ Swan watched for a while, and began to search around the water gate for signs of use.

There were several.

Very cautiously indeed, he pushed against the great iron gate.

He found scratches on the floor that proved it had been opened. Repeatedly, and recently.

He climbed up the rough stone inside the gate, and near the top he found the simple bolt that held it fast. He released it, felt the heavy iron start to swing, and shoved it back with his shoulder, almost losing his grip. He put the bolt back and dropped to the walkway.

‘We can open it whenever we want from inside,’ he said. He pointed out the headland opposite. ‘We’re south of Galata. Look at the current.’

Peter nodded.

‘Our galley can drop down on the tide – and pass within a stone’s throw of right here.’ He nodded to himself. ‘Nightfall or daybreak would be best.’

Peter rubbed his beard. ‘It would be all or nothing,’ he said. ‘If the galley misses the boat—’

‘The boat is swept away on the current never to be seen again.’ Swan grinned.

Peter shook his head. ‘I pity the poor bastards in the boat.’

‘Save your pity,’ Swan said. ‘You’ll be with them.’

That evening, they climbed the ladder up the well-shaft into what they believed to be Cardinal Bessarion’s Constantinople house. Despite his meticulous scouting, Swan’s heart beat like an armourer’s hammer smoothing metal as he climbed the ladder as far as it would go. Then he threw the rope with a grapnel. It went up, and then it came down, and nearly hit him on the head.

‘Damn,’ Swan said.

Peter nodded. ‘I’ll just climb down and wait for you to do this on your own,’ he said.

Swan waited for the archer to climb down. Then he tossed the grapnel as high as he dared, and covered his head.