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

said. ‘I confess we were silent for days after we . . . took it.’

‘It is like living with a gate into heaven,’ said Irene. She laughed – but softly, as if she was in church. ‘I am too much a sinner to be comfortable living with such a gate.’

Swan reached out and touched the skull.

Just for a moment, the world went white. Blank. Nothing – no noise, no sight.

He found he was on his knees again.

‘Oh my God,’ he said.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘Exactly.’

If the head was spectacular, the library was staggering.

‘This is all Bessarion’s?’ Swan asked, as he unrolled a scroll that seemed to have six plays in Greek all lined up together. He lacked the true connoisseur’s knowledge, but the scrolls seemed to be very old. The first play was entitled Taxiarchoi.

Taxiarchs were the archangels, in Greek.

‘Not all of it, by any means,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Some of it was mine. And some—’

Apollinaris laughed. ‘Most of it we stole. Or borrowed. I prefer to use the term rescued.’

Swan read a few lines. The main character was the god Dionysus, so that the play in question wasn’t about archangels at all.

After a moment, he guffawed.

In the scene he was reading, a weapons master was trying to teach the God of Wine to be a soldier. Swan had no idea how ancient the play might be, but just for a moment he had an odd, almost haunted feeling, as if the author of the play might be watching him. It was funny – deeply funny.

Nikephorus nodded. ‘That was mine. I collected all the plays I could find from the ancient world.’ He shook his head. ‘I used to fear that the Patriarch and his monks would find out, and I would be prosecuted.’

‘Who is this Eupolis?’ Swan asked.

Nikephorus bit his lip. Then he smiled. ‘I don’t really know,’ he admitted with a grandiloquent gesture.

Irene laughed and clapped her hands. ‘I’ve never heard you say that before, old man!’

Swan looked at another scroll. ‘And who was Heraklitus?’ he asked.

‘A philosopher,’ Nikephorus said. ‘I haven’t even read that one.’ He sighed. ‘The Suda – you know the Suda?’

Swan smiled. ‘Not at all, I fear.’

Nikephorus brightened. ‘While your ancestors were living in mud huts in Hyperborea, my dear young man, our monks were writing detailed encyclopedias of classical learning.’ He shook his head. ‘Classical learning comes and goes in fashion and tolerance,’ he said, somewhat peevishly. As if continuing his train of thought, he said, ‘I feared all the wrong things, and now my whole world is gone.’

‘Heraklitus was a philosopher like Aristotle? Like Plato?’ Swan asked.

‘Earlier, I think,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Not my field.’

Swan looked up at the scrolls. Hundreds of them. ‘Are any of these Aristotle?’ he asked.

‘All this,’ Irene said, smiling. Twenty scrolls sat in niches under a small marble bust. ‘This is an ancient statue of the man himself.’

Swan had that haunted feeling again. He took a scroll down.

An hour later, a dirty Christian beggar stopped a small Jewish beggar on the street.

‘I need to get a message to King David,’ the Christian said.

The boy nodded. ‘Sure, boss,’ he said, in Greek.

‘Just knock it in,’ Peter said.

Swan didn’t like waste. He prowled around the wellhead, because if they knocked it to pieces, it would be obvious to everyone how they’d escaped. And Swan liked to leave mystery behind him, when he could. It made for a better prank. A finer jest. And practically speaking, while he wasn’t sure who would be following him, he had a feeling . . .

On hands and knees, he found the deep crack that ran around the heavy marble block that held the cast bronze and stone wellhead. Under the dry-sink, he found a pair of holes in the marble, cut in at an angle.

Even better, leaning against the wall, he found two iron bars which fitted into the wellhead block.

It took four of them to lever it up. When they were done, they had an opening the size of a small cart, leading down into the darkness.

After dark, a wagon rolled up to the gate. Peter and Constantios watched it with bows drawn, while the two dancers covered the street and Swan went out the door into the courtyard.

Isaac slipped off the wagon box. ‘A boat?’ he asked. ‘It’s not even illegal to get a boat. You summoned me to get you a boat?’ He glared. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Simon means to sell me to the Turks,’ Swan said. ‘You?’

Isaac froze.

‘I find that sometimes this sort of talk saves time,’ Swan said. ‘There are more plots here than in the Bible. I want to make a straight deal. I will give you some very valuable items and some information, and you will provide me with this boat and take a single message to the Venetian quarter. And we’ll part friends, and be available to help each other another time. Simon won’t ever get to betray me, which he’ll live to be glad of. And I’ll survive to take your letters back to Venice.’

‘Why would I need you to carry my letters?’ Isaac asked.

‘I assume you plan to play the Venetian markets based on the Sultan’s invasion of the Morea.’ Swan shrugged. ‘I would.’

Isaac laughed. ‘Not bad. Why trust me?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘It saves time. And if everyone here is going to sell me, I’m dead. I have to trust someone.’

‘I agree.’ Isaac rubbed his beard. ‘I’m just not sure anyone has ever chosen me as the one to trust before.’ He laughed. ‘I like you, mad Englishman.’

Swan grinned. ‘Come back in two days. Everything you find in the house is yours.’ Swan handed over a note. ‘See to it this goes to Alessandro in the Venetian quarter. Like your packet – there’s nothing in it worth reading.’

Isaac smiled mirthlessly. ‘Balthazar said he liked you,’ he said. ‘So I will extend the courtesy of honesty. I can give you a day. Perhaps the two you want. Then I have to sell you, or I look . . . bad – to the Grand Turk.’

‘If you can make it two,’ Swan said, ‘I will count it an honest deal.’

Isaac bowed. ‘I will do my best.’

Swan took his hand, and they embraced briefly.

An hour later, the boat was floating, fully loaded, in the current.

Then they all climbed up one more time, swept the floors and the fireplaces, and the women went out and dumped the ash. Everything else went into the sewers until the house was clean. Then they levered the wellhead back into position and slid down the rope.

And then Irene climbed the wall like a spider and retrieved the rope.

‘What do we do with the ladder?’ Apollinaris asked.

Swan smiled. ‘Float it with us. Not far,’ he muttered.

Swan led them along the sewers, following his map. After the first arch – foundations, he assumed of the old city walls. Passing under the arch required very careful management of the boat and the floating ladder, but they got through, mostly dry. Swan counted the wells above them, and then stopped, cut loose the ladder, and raised it on to the walkway. He grinned at Peter and offered no explanation, and they were away again in moments.

The second time they had to pass under an arch, everyone had to swim, and Nikephorus, who couldn’t, had to hold on to the back of the boat. The older man was clearly terrified, and equally clearly in control of himself to a degree that caused him to rise high in Swan’s estimation.

Irene’s figure also caught Swan’s attention.

Cold, but triumphant, they passed east almost a mile, moving easily downstream. Once they had to get out on to the walkway, empty the boat, and carry everything around an obstruction where the street above had