Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (27 page)

‘Oh, I know she is quite indispensable,’ Isolde turned abruptly, without a word to Ishraq, and went up the stairs.

Freize and Ishraq followed the servants carrying baskets of bread and bottles of oil and wine and water. Luca glanced around and saw them coming, then turned his attention to the galley.

Radu, now completely unarmed, brought a box covered in oiled pony skin from his ship. He held it before him so that Luca could see there was no trick, and walked towards the table that the servants were setting up. ‘Two manuscripts,’ he said quietly. ‘Only two. I chose to bring these with me because they are about this coast. I have been sailing along it and comparing what I see to what they saw more than a thousand years ago. These are copies of ancient writings held in our libraries. We have the greatest libraries in the world, and translators and philosophers working all day, every day.’

Luca had a sudden pang of envy that he had no teacher and no books to guide him, and that the greatest library he had ever seen had been at his monastery where they had three manuscripts and a Bible chained to a desk. But first he had to ask Radu something else.

‘I want to find a man and a woman. I believe they were taken on a slaving raid.’

Radu started to unwrap the waterproof cover. ‘Really? Taken recently?’

Luca gulped. ‘Years ago, four years ago. My parents.’

‘Do you know what ship was raiding? The name of the commander?’

‘I don’t even know if he took them or killed them.’

‘It’s hard to trace people after a long time,’ Radu said indifferently. ‘But sometimes it can be done. There are thousands of slaves taken every year, but it can be done. You will want to ransom them, I suppose? You need to speak with Father Pietro, in Venice. He buys slaves from us when their families raise the money; he’s accustomed to finding people. Every year he buys a few thousand unnamed slaves with money given from your church and returns them to their homes.’

‘He does?’ Luca blinked. ‘I’ve never even heard of him.’

‘Of course. Someone has to trade between us. We are two mighty trading empires, and there are all sorts of people coming and going all the time. There are many middle agents, but he’s the best that I know. You are always kidnapping our people and we yours. He deals in the sales of holy relics too. We can’t make them fast enough for you. You have an unending appetite for human bones, it seems.’ He laughed. ‘We could almost think you gnaw on them like dogs. Fortunately, we have an unending supply from our endless victories. What name is it?’

‘Vero,’ Luca said. ‘My mother and father. Where would I find Father Pietro?’

Radu smiled. ‘On the Rialto of course. Slaves are a trade like any other. I should think you can buy anything there.’ He shouted towards his boat. ‘Anyone heard of a man named Vero?’

‘Guilliam Vero,’ Luca prompted.

‘Guilliam Vero. Taken about four years ago. Rowers, you can speak!’

One head went up. ‘On Bayeed’s ship,’ he said. ‘Two years ago.’

‘There you are,’ Radu said indifferently. ‘Father Pietro may be able to trace him for you, if he’s not dead already.’

‘Who is Bayeed?’ Luca asked urgently. ‘Where is his ship?’

Radu shrugged. ‘I don’t know Bayeed. He’ll be a slave raider, and where his ship is right now, no one knows – could be anywhere, working the Italian coast, perhaps Spain, or France. They raid and then take their stock back home for sale. You’ll have to ask Father Pietro.’

‘Is the man sure? The slave who knows my father. Can I ask him?’

‘He’s sure. No one speaks to me unless they are sure. You can’t ask him.’

Luca exclaimed with frustration but Radu Bey was untroubled. He pulled out a chair from the table and sat himself down, looking around him as if he was pleased with this unexpected dinner on land.

The soldiers were coming off the galley now, one by one up the gangplank to take the measurement of the rough-cut mast. They brought with them woodworking tools. They would pare down the mast to fit it exactly to the place on the deck. Below them on the ship, other men were cutting away the broken spars and throwing them into the water.

‘Alive,’ Luca said. He was shaking with emotion. ‘My father is alive.’

Radu looked at him without sympathy. ‘I suppose it’s hard to lose a parent if you love him,’ he said indifferently. ‘My father gave me as a hostage, to Sultan Murad. I never saw him nor my mother again. I’ve never been home. My father traded me and my brother for his throne. I don’t forgive him for that. I might have done the same in his position; but I’ll never forgive him for giving the two of us away. His own sons.’

‘I’ve spent years praying that my parents were still alive and that I might see them again.’

‘Yes, I suppose you will have done,’ Radu said without concern.

‘My father!’ Luca was choked with emotion. He shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘Excuse me, I had thought that I would never see him again. You have given me hope.’

The servants from the inn put food on the table, some meats, some bread, cheeses, smoked fish, fresh stewed fish, a bottle of wine. Radu held out his hands and one of the servants poured water into his palms for him to wash, and gave him a towel of linen to dry them. He served himself liberally and then passed his plate to Luca. ‘Forgive me. I will eat with a better appetite, if you would taste everything they have brought for me. I don’t wish to be an impolite guest but equally, I want to survive this dinner.’

‘Very well,’ Luca said.

Radu waited patiently while Luca took a spoonful of everything.

‘The wine, if you will forgive my suspicious nature,’ Radu gestured to the bottle. Ishraq stepped forward and poured a small amount into a glass and handed it to Luca.

He took a sip. ‘Don’t you refuse wine? I thought you could not drink alcohol?’

‘Not when I am at sea, or on campaign.’ Radu watched Luca for signs of poison, but all he could see was a young man struggling to take in extraordinary news.

‘If I could get him back, if I could find her, then I would be an orphan no longer.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Radu said cheerfully, and seeing that Luca showed no signs of illness, he started to eat with relish, watching the work on his ship and now and then glancing back at the quayside to see that he was safe from a landside attack. Ishraq stood behind Freize and watched the Ottoman with a steady, unwavering gaze.

‘I am sorry. You have quite unmanned me,’ Luca said recovering himself. ‘I can hardly believe that my father lives. My father, that I thought was lost to me, still lives. Praise be to God.’

Radu, chewing on a chicken leg, nodded. ‘You understand that life on the galleys is hard? Few men live beyond a few years. He might have died since this man saw him, he might be dead now, might die before you get him ransomed.’

Luca nodded. ‘But I have been without hope, and you have given me hope.’

Radu laughed shortly at the thought of being the bearer of good tidings to a sentimental Christian, and reached for some stewed fish. ‘I am glad to be – what do you call it? – a herald angel. And your mother?’

‘Will I be able to find her?’

‘Perhaps more easily than him. If she is working for a master he will know her name, he might even have taken pity on her and offered her to be ransomed back. Unless she is in a harem and her master has taken a fancy to her. Was she pretty? Fertile? You might have half a dozen brown-skinned brothers and sisters.’

Luca’s fists clenched on the table. ‘She is my mother,’ he said warningly. ‘I won’t hear a word . . .’

Behind him Freize tensed, readying himself for a fight but Ishraq stepped swiftly forwards, her hat pulled low over her eyes. ‘More wine, Sires?’ she lifted the bottle and deliberately clunked it against the back of Luca’s head in passing. ‘Sorry, Sir.’

‘Clumsy fool,’ Luca gasped, recovering himself. He took a breath and turned to Radu. ‘We won’t speak of my parents. You will not speak of my mother. Now, to business. The manuscript. You don’t object that my clerk’s lad makes a note of what we say?’

Radu shook his head. ‘Not at all.’ He looked at Ishraq who pulled out a stool to sit down, and dipped the quill in the ink. For a moment their eyes met: dark into dark. ‘Interesting boy,’ he said. ‘An Arab?’ He said a few rapid words in Arabic. Ishraq did not allow herself even a flicker of response, though he had said to her, ‘Are you an Arab boy? Do you want me to free you?’

‘Half-caste,’ Luca said indifferently. ‘The child of a slave.’

‘Does he understand Latin?’

‘No,’ Luca said. ‘Only enough to write what I say, that’s all he’s good for.’

‘You should teach him,’ Radu advised. ‘It’s amazing what a bright boy can learn.’

‘Were you a bright boy?’

Radu smiled. ‘My brother and I were more than bright, we were brilliant boys. Our father gave us to the Sultan as hostages for his alliance and though he did not intend it, he sent us to perhaps the only court in the world where we would be educated by the best in the world. We were raised with Sultan Murad’s son Mehmet, we were taught with him – five languages, mathematics, geography, philosophy – in short: the meaning of the world and how to describe it.’

‘And now?’

The smallest shadow crossed Radu Bey’s face – Ishraq saw it, but nobody else did. ‘My brother went home. He inherited my father’s throne and agreed to hold our homelands for the Ottoman Empire, but he was faithless and turned against us. He’s overthrown now – in exile, but he’ll be gathering an army I don’t doubt, and hoping to hold the frontier against us again. He is dead to me. I doubt I’ll ever see him again. He chose the wrong side. He is my enemy. Our fates have led us in opposite directions: he is a great Christian commander, and I am one of the greatest commanders that my friend the Sultan Mehmet can put in the field.’

‘And you carry manuscripts with you everywhere that you go? You study?’

‘I read, all the time, and then I read some more. This is the way to understanding. I believe that one day we will understand everything.’ He smiled. ‘Shall I read what Plato says about earthquakes? It’s translated from the Greek into Arabic. I’ll translate it as I read for you, as best I can.’

Carefully, he unwrapped the manuscripts that were written in beautiful Arabic letters on scrolls of vellum. Meticulously he spread them out, and with a glance at Ishraq, started to read. ‘Now, this is the bit you will find interesting: Here . . . he talks about a great island in the Atlantic, a huge country, bigger than Libya and Asia put together . . . and he says, hmm . . . “
There occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.
”’

‘Earthquake and the land sinking?’ Luca confirmed. ‘An army of men sinking down into the earth? A great island sinking down into the sea and then nothing but a shoal of mud where it had been?’

‘It sounds as if there was an earthquake so great that it swallowed up an army. An earthquake which caused the sea to drown a huge country.’ Radu read on. ‘Plato is telling of this because Socrates has been talking about an account of a city with earthquakes and floods.’ Radu’s smooth voice paused. ‘That’s about it.’

‘Earthquakes and floods? As if they come together?’

Radu nodded. ‘Also, one of our own Arabic thinkers suggests that the earthquake moves the land under the sea. If you can imagine it, the land beneath the sea rises up, and the water is forced to flow away from it.’

Luca made sure he did not look at Ishraq, who kept her head bowed over the paper, rapidly writing.

‘What else does he write about, Plato? What else does he say?’ Luca was transfixed.

‘He writes about everything, really.’ Radu saw Luca’s entranced face. ‘Ah, you must get hold of a manuscript and have a Greek translate it for you.’