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

A shadowy figure passed through a curtain at the darker end of the room and vanished. He heard a murmur of sound. Turkish, certainly.

A new, taller figure entered through the curtain. Walked to the edge of the bed, and sat gracefully beside him.

Her hand touched his shoulder, and ran down his side, to his thigh, and down his thigh between his legs.

‘Hmm,’ Auntie said. She stood and wriggled, and then she was naked, except for a chain around her waist and bangles at one wrist and one ankle. ‘I wish we had a language in common, Englishman,’ she said in Arabic. Her left hand ran expertly up between his legs.

She laughed. ‘Never mind,’ she said and knelt on the bed. She leaned over and her breasts touched his chest. Her perfumed hair fell all around him.

He moaned.

She laughed, and kissed him. A little too hard, and a little too fast. It was as if he was delicate.

Somewhere close, a woman shouted. Another screamed.

Auntie paused. One finger flicked the head of his penis. In Arabic, she said, ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ She laughed and slipped off the bed.

Swan, even deep in the throes of lust, noticed that she had a dagger in her hand.

Everything seemed to be happening very slowly. For the first time, it occurred to him that he’d been drugged.

Auntie was magnificent, naked, in the light of a single lamp wick, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away. She curved, and curved.

There was a sound of running feet.

Auntie said something softly. Swan would have sworn she said ‘Shit’, in some language or other. She picked her long shawl off the floor and slipped it around her body.

Swan tried to prop himself on his elbow, but he didn’t seem to be in full control of his body. One part of him was working very well – rather embarrassingly well. The rest – refused their duty.

She slipped out through the curtain.

Another scream, and the unmistakable sound of one blade on another.

He tried to get to his feet, and failed. His erection was comic, and he giggled and fell back on the bed. The colours of the wall hangings were deep and vibrant, more like sounds than colours.

Drugged.

He couldn’t stop giggling.

A figure appeared at the curtain. More running feet, and more blades.

A second figure appeared.

‘My poor dear,’ whispered Khatun Bengul, in Italian. And then, ‘My. My, my.’ And a giggle.

Well-muscled arms lifted him. He couldn’t have resisted if he’d wished to.

He was wrapped in a sheet, and thrown over a man’s shoulders. He had the wind knocked out of him.

He could only see the floor.

Through the curtain to a vestibule. Magnificent with gold writing – Persian. There was a corpse, face down, on the tiled floor.

Stairs.

A pool of blood, and blood running down the steps like some sort of ghastly waterfall. At the top of the steps, behind them, lay the African, dead, his head half severed by a scimitar.

And the blood ran on and on, over the tiled floor., down the steps like some ghastly waterfall. Beautiful, in a way.

Good Christ.

The man carrying him ran down the steps and into another hall, and then ran as hard as a man can run while carrying another man.

It was like a nightmare, except that Swan was never afraid. They crossed a courtyard – arched, colonnaded, and magnificent with glazed tiles and fine hangings. Even in his dream state, Swan realised he’d been there before. With horses.

Up. A flight of steps, and there were lights appearing all along the top of the colonnade opposite.

‘Faster!’ said Khatun Bengul.

And then they went through a door, into a blaze of light.

Through a set of beads, and another, and past a great set of double doors of cedar inset with ivory and silver, and then he was unceremoniously lowered into a great trunk, also of cedar. He hit his head, and admired the shooting stars that whirled around him.

Khatun Bengul’s head appeared, framed in the light. ‘My poor Frank,’ she said. Her eyes shifted away. And back. A certain light came into her eyes, and she leaned down and put her lips on his.

He responded instantly. His face rose to hers. The tip of her tongue caressed his, and then she was gone.

Someone slammed the lid of the trunk shut, and he was alone in the darkness.

The extreme alertness didn’t fade, and he heard a male voice – raised in anger, but some rooms away. Perhaps out in the central courtyard. And then another, and a woman’s, shrill as a fishwife’s. All in Turkish.

Then the sound of a man’s hand knocking at the outer door.

‘Khatun Bengul!’ he cried. ‘Khatun Bengul!’ and then a long, calm string of words in Turkish.

He heard her, even across several rooms, go barefoot to the door of her apartments and open it.

Turahanoglu Omar Reis. Even full of whatever he’d been given, he knew that voice.

Khatun Bengul’s father.

Idris’s father.

What am I doing here? Swan thought.

Auntie must be his sister, he thought, his first piece of deductive reasoning in many hours. Things fell into place.

His fearless lassitude fell away, and he was suddenly and completely terrified.

Omar Reis spoke to his daughter for a long time.

A need to piss began to creep into Swan’s hierarchy of needs. And his posture, folded in the trunk, was growing painful. His lower legs were bent back under him. His knees burned.

She said something imperious. Swan had been an adolescent – he knew that tone. She said something like Fine! Do whatever you want.

More footsteps. Male. And many of them.

After a while, he decided that soldiers or servants were searching the place.

‘How dare you! Not in my room!’ she said, with all the drama of the young, in Arabic.

The cedar doors crashed open.

I’m going to die naked, in a fancy trunk, with a raging hard-on. Swan couldn’t decide whether to be more terrified or to laugh aloud.

Drugged. For sure.

Drawers were opened.

A trunk was opened. Then another.

Then a new voice – calm, level, and wheedling.

Idris.

Then Khatun Bengul – a shriek of adolescent righteousness that crossed language and cultural barriers.

In a blaze of light, his trunk was opened.

A crack.

Swan’s fear made him virtually unable to breathe.

Someone’s hand held the trunk open just a little. Idris’s voice – quite close. All Turkish. Swan had no idea what Idris was saying.

He lay there, waiting for the trunk to be opened farther. The top was ajar about the breadth of a man’s