‘If you would care to ride with us,’ Khatun Bengul said, ‘my auntie will keep a very careful watch on us.’ She spat the words.
‘Don’t think I can’t understand when you talk love words to the dirty Frank,’ said the auntie.
Khatun Bengul flushed red. ‘This is Italian,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with love.’
However, despite their inauspicious beginning, the next hour was a pleasure. Khatun Bengul flew her two small birds with expertise, gossiping in Arabic and Turkish with her aunt on the one hand and coaching Swan to fly a gyrfalcon on the other in Italian. And when the gyrfalcon, tired of his inept hand motions, bated, and then slipped his jesses and flew into an oak tree, the women laughed, and Swan laughed, and when he dismounted, stripped out of his kaftan and climbed the tree, successfully retrieving the bird, the two women clapped their hands together as if he were a conjuror.
‘He really is handsome,’ Auntie said. ‘Pity he isn’t a slave.’
That took the wind out of Swan’s sails. Auntie was looking at him with the sort of appraisal with which older women had been examining him since he had turned fourteen, and ordinarily he’d have arranged . . .
But he couldn’t take his eyes off Khatun Bengul.
Perhaps fortunately for all of them, Idris returned shortly after the adventure of the gyrfalcon and the tree.
He clapped Swan on the back. ‘I see you have learned the first lesson of falconry – how to retrieve a lost bird,’ he said. ‘You have done this before?’
‘One of the boys is teaching me,’ Swan said.
Idris laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘My father will indeed have us all killed,’ he laughed. ‘You know she’s my sister, eh?’
Swan sighed. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.
‘And a force of nature,’ Idris acknowledged. They had turned their horses towards home. Most of the Turks had mounted a second horse.
‘She was very . . . courteous to me,’ Swan said.
Idris laughed, his head thrown back. ‘She makes boys bark at the moon,’ he said. ‘Ah, my Englishman. Do not cast languishing glances on my sister. She spits on the men who worship her.’ He took a flask out of his kaftan, drank, and handed it to Swan, who drank. Greek wine – sweet and strong.
‘All the good Persian poets were drunks,’ Idris said. ‘I’m working on it.’ He smiled. ‘Of course, Holy Koran forbids it. Or so my imam insists.’
Later, after they had passed the Belgrade Gate, Idris said, ‘Listen – I owe you my life, but you must never mention that my sister was here today. When I saw her . . . never mind.’
‘I will swear,’ Swan promised.
‘It’s a hard life for her,’ Idris said. ‘In Thrace, when my father is commanding an army, she rides like a man – shoots a bow, sleeps on the ground. It is how we were raised. My mother – she was a tribal woman, you know?’
Swan didn’t know, but he nodded.
‘Owned her own horses. Owns farms in Anatolia. So we were raised to the saddle. And in this cursed city, poor Khatun Bengul must pretend to be a good girl, a nice girl who stays at home and has slaves take money to the poor, who never shows her face, who never rides a horse.’ Idris shrugged. ‘We don’t always get along.’
Khatun Bengul leaned in from Swan’s other side. ‘He uses me to protect him from Father,’ she said.
Swan looked at her. When he breathed in, he tasted her scent over the smell of flowers and grass and horse.
‘She uses me to protect her from Father, too,’ Idris said.
‘I
Behind them, all of Idris’s friends were watching her.
Swan took a deep, steadying breath. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Every one of us.’
‘Sufia will be in our stables – but available for you at any hour,’ Idris said. They rode past the great aqueduct, through the forum of Constantine, and past the north end of the Hippodrome to the great houses beyond Hagia Sophia.
Swan breathed a sigh of relief when his horse was not stabled in the great cathedral. Sacrilege had its limits.
They rode into the palace quarter and dismounted in the courtyard of a fine square of buildings. Workmen were facing the front of the stables with beautiful fired tiles in a rich blue with the trailing cursive of Persian script. Less than a hundred paces away, a tall minaret was being built on to a low Byzantine church.
Swan handed his horse to a pair of slaves. He put a hand familiarly on Idris’s arm. ‘You have your friends,’ he said. ‘I should go.’
Idris bowed. ‘You are a good guest. Will you come riding again?’
Swan smiled. ‘My lord, the bishop will probably give birth to a cow when he hears that I spent the day with infidels.’
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 Bengul said. ‘But she doesn’t know how to ask.’
Swan, seldom at a loss for words, had none for this situation.
Khatun Bengul 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 Bengul 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
