Popes and Phantoms Page 4

  Vengeance? he thought as he clambered over the side and the sea-dead fled to their proper place. A curse? I’d have paid good money for this!

  After a wide-ranging and enjoyable discussion on Plato and the efficacy of the spells prescribed by the god Hermes Trismegistus in his masterwork, Corpus Hermeticum, the senior of the two Vehmists indicated that they should proceed to more mundane business.

  The lesser brother, a member of the Rhodian Military Order of St John and appropriately armed and dressed, was weary after coming direct to this interview from his long journey. Even so, he sat up straight in his ornate carved chair and awaited some sign that he might deliver his report.

  The other man, older than the first but clothed in equal splendour in the High academic gown of the Gemistan2 Platonic School, levered himself up and crossed the room. There he checked for potential eavesdroppers and then closed and locked the door. Only after that, with a wave of his ancient and be-ringed hand, did he urge his guest on. Even in their Grecian citadel at Mistra, the Vehme had varying degrees of trust.

  ‘Honourable Master,’ said the Knight of St John, his Greek, though probably not his first language, faultless and courtly, ‘I can convey both a measure of success and failure …’

  ‘I know you, Captain Jean,’ smiled the old scholar, ‘your failures are ordinary men’s glorious triumphs. Your past service to the cause would excuse a thousand disasters to come. So, tell me all without fear of reprimand.’

  The Knight savoured the high compliment before proceeding. ‘I have discovered the fate of our man,’ he said, ‘but failed to retrieve his murdered body.’

  ‘How so?’ asked the scholar.

  ‘The sea has him, and her returning of borrowed objects is most capricious. We have scanned the likely rocks and beaches unsmiled on by fortune.’

  ‘At this remove of time,’ the scholar mused, looking idly out of the diamond-paned window down the spur of Mount Taygetus and at the landscape of the Morea (or Sparta, as he would archaically have termed it) below, ‘I doubt there would be anything whole or wholesome for us to revere with burial.’

  The Knight nodded his agreement. ‘You are undoubtedly correct, but I fastidiously forbore to mention the point. Some of the cadavers we did discover were quite … impermissible!’

  ‘Just so, Captain. Very well then, let our brother roll in the embrace of the waves. He shall have his oratory hymn all the same. Its composition is near complete – as doubtless is his decomposition – a most moving conceit in which the styles of Pindar and Sappho meet and conjoin.’

  The Knight smiled warily. ‘A most unlikely mating,’ he said, ‘given the predilections of either poet.’

  The scholar chose to miss the allusion. ‘In the Academy we have talents capable of such … problematic graftings,’ he said. ‘The art of the ancients may be incomparable but we have come to be passably good mimics. I think the death of our Consul of the Venetian Vehme merits some little exertion on our part – even if it’s only artistic, don’t you? Incidentally, did you ascertain who killed him?’

  The Knight’s face suddenly became hardened, the speed and ease of transformation suggesting that this was its normal state. ‘It was a pirate,’ he said lightly. ‘We know that much, but not his name. He must be a new arrival in the Middle Sea or else we would have him already.’

  ‘An alternative explanation might be that he is subtle and full of craft beyond the norm,’ ventured the scholar gently.

  ‘There is that possibility,’ said the Knight, forcing himself to consider the proposition. ‘But it does not affect the ultimate issue – merely its timing. He will be found, in due course, and made to render full restitution for his crime.’

  ‘It will be so,’ agreed the scholar. ‘We are enacting a morality play for the benefit of the gods and those generations who are yet to come. Let it be done then to our script and according to virtue.’

  ‘Amen!’ chorused the Knight. ‘He’s as good as dead.’

  ‘Goodness, no!’ said Enver Rashi, Pasha of the Ottoman-conquered sanjak of Morea. ‘Quite the contrary!’

  He had just informed the Gemistan Platonic scholar that the name of their Venetian brother’s killer was already known to him. The scholar had promptly vowed the murderer’s speedy extinction.

  ‘Esteemed little brother,’ he said to the puzzled older man, ‘I fear your donkey trek from the Mistra Citadel to my court was partly wasted. Our late companion has already found means of conveying your news to me.’

  The scholar, being complete master of his chosen academic field, was little used to radical surprise.

  ‘This dead … colleague … has told you?’ he stumbled, eyeing the Pasha for signs of mockery or, almost as bad, a trap. The shameless hussy laid out on the couch beside her master in turn lazily surveyed the Greek as if he were some unappetizing carcass.

  ‘Effectively,’ confirmed the Turk. ‘At least, he permitted me to know.’ As he signalled to the towering Janissary guard by a side door, a bedraggled captive was shoved into the dazzling white reception chamber. ‘This man was the actual conveyance the message took,’ he explained.

  This unfortunate, a European of obvious base birth, was well rehearsed. Under the baleful gaze of the Janissary, he recited his tale to the stranger present. ‘I was fishing,’ he said, in what was clearly – and painfully – rote-learnt pigeon Turkish, ‘off Malta where I live.’

  ‘Lived,’ corrected Enver Pasha. ‘Past tense.’

  ‘Lived. Then the man – or what was left of a man – rose out of the sea before me and stood there like he was on solid land, or he were Christ upon Galilee.’

  The scholar, whose love of Greece and Rome led him to fear and resent Christianity and its founder, daintily curled his lips at such a reference. The Circassian girl, bored beyond measure, yawned and prepared to doze.

  ‘Then he told me where I was to go, what I was to say and to whom. He promised me great riches if I did as I was bade and damnation if I did not. And so here I am.’

  ‘And there you go!’ quipped Enver Pasha, capping the fisherman’s speech and indicating with one fat hand that he should be bundled from their presence. ‘The Venetian,’ Enver then gravely advised the scholar, ‘did not forget his duty either side of the grave. He was one of our finest.’

  ‘Perhaps still is …’ hazarded the scholar.

  ‘No,’ replied Enver Pasha airily, ‘the sea and its inhabitants do the most horrible things to lifeless flesh. His magic could not counter those sundering influences for ever.’

  ‘So that is it!’ crowed the old scholar, who knew all too much about the rapid dissolution of the body.

  ‘Of course,’ answered the Pasha, beaming a smile of white and gold. ‘How else? You must know that the Hermeticum instructs how to instil divine essence into a statue …’

  ‘I do,’ the scholar confidently affirmed. ‘And thereby we preserve the Pagan pantheon for future days.’

  ‘Just so. Well, the Venetian had access to a deeper teaching by which the fleeing soul may be chained just a little longer to its prison of meat.’

  ‘I had no idea!’ gaped the scholar, forgetting considerations of image for a brief moment, such was his amazement.

  ‘Being so menial in our counsels,’ said the Pasha brutally, ‘we chose not to enlighten you – until it was necessary. The fisherman was instructed to tell me one thing only – the name: Captain Slovo.’

  ‘But you do not wish me to remove this … grit in our sandal?’ asked the scholar, his private world now all turned topsy-turvy.

  ‘No,’ said the Pasha, gently stroking the gauze-clad rump of the houri prone beside him. ‘I want you to find him.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  The Pasha nodded, his hand now moving to an even more intimate role. ‘At your new – as of this moment – level, yes, you may. It transpires, by the strangest of coincidences – in which, as you know, we do not believe – that this Slovo is one of ours. Of all those available for the job, th
e Venetian found the one pirate in our ranks to be killed by. How odd, how strange, that this man should simultaneously return to our attention and create his own vacancy. He is clearly as favoured as the Venetian was not. In fact, I learn that he is a major investment, a piece of steel of our own forging. That is why, when he is found, I want you also to activate the Papal Chapter, excluding only the deepest buried treasures. It appears Slovo figures in many divergent plans and so, far from killing him, you will bring him home and pave his way.’

  ‘It shall be so,’ said the scholar and bowed as deeply as his traitorous joints would permit him.

  ‘It must be so!’ answered the Pasha. ‘Now please leave – amorous instincts are storming the walls of my rational faculties.’

  Being a mischievous as well as a learned old man, the scholar turned back after reaching the door to the outer audience chamber. As he’d hoped, proceedings were already well advanced and the houri’s lustrous head was buried deep in the Pasha’s crotch. ‘And the fisherman?’ he asked innocently.

  Enver Pasha regained control of his eyeballs and disengaged his intimate accomplice. ‘Service in the galleys of the Sultan seems best,’ he said as evenly as he could. ‘The man is used to a maritime career.’

  ‘But no riches?’

  ‘It is possible,’ replied the Pasha, leaning back in anticipation of a professionally choreographed hour or two to come. ‘Once every decade or so, a ship gets in such a desperate position that it frees and arms its galley-slaves. Of those unfortunate ships a few might even go on to win the fight. A rare sea-captain, one whom life has not yet hardened beyond human gratitude, might reward a slave who’d fought, performed mighty deeds of valour, and yet survived. It could just happen … and certainly he had no greater chance of fortune as a Maltese fish-grabber.’ Enver Pasha managed to sound the most reasonable of men. ‘Therefore of what have we deprived him?’

  The scholar conceded the point by withdrawing and closing the double doors. He then made haste to leave the Pasha’s Athenian palace since sight of its present state, captured, altered and debauched to Islamic tastes and usage, upset him. Other more worthy feet should be treading the same ground. Perhaps even … his step could have graced that ravished spot. It didn’t bear thinking about he decided as the silk-glorified Janissaries grimly monitored his exit from the premises. Outside, he was careful to avert his gaze from the dishonoured Acropolis above.

  How monstrous, mused the scholar, as he threaded his donkey through the decayed streets of once-Imperial Athens, that anything should presume to exist without reverence for the gods, Plato and antiquity. High time that civilization was rearranged so as to compel it!

  The Year 1487

  ‘I find service with a Master of my chosen trade and meet new and frightening people with my best interests at heart.’

  ‘I came to Tripoli because I was so tired of Europe,’ said Admiral Slovo. ‘And with what they are trying to do there.’

  ‘Are they trying to do something?’ asked his elderly companion. ‘I could never discern any cohesive project – and I am old, whereas you—’

  ‘I have an old mind,’ answered Slovo. ‘And, for all your years you have never experienced at first hand the frenetic chit-chat going on over there now. I perceived a burgeoning wish to render life … rational – understandable, even. Impossible, of course, but the attempt makes for a lot of misery, physical and spiritual. That doesn’t deter the merchants and philosophers, naturally.’

  The old man looked up from his beautifully drafted star-charts and studied Slovo by the shifting light of the giant candle. ‘If what you say is true,’ he said eventually, having characteristically thought the matter through thoroughly, regardless of socially awkward silences, ‘then I would agree. To attempt to understand, let alone explain, the mind of Allah is the life-project of the fool. Yet all I see of you Christian infidel races suggests little such … dryness. My prevailing impression is one of quite appalling vitality – combined with a propensity for violence far beyond the needs of the situation. That, I suggest, Slo-el-Vo, is a recipe for boisterous expansion, not boredom.’

  ‘Perhaps, esteemed Khair Khaleel-el-Din,’ suggested Slovo with polite hesitation, ‘you have merely met the wrong people.’

  The old man nodded, his great green turban adding enormous gravitas to the simple gesture. ‘Possibly. As a pirate, or latterly a chief of pirates, I have encountered perhaps an unrepresentative selection of your kin. It may be that I simply recall, across a gap of sixty years, what my tutor in the trade impressed upon me. Respect the ships of the Christians, he told me, even as you sink them. Be prepared to wade in blood, and not necessarily someone else’s. On the surface they may seem soft – with all their talk of love and charity – but underneath … well!’

  ‘He may have had a point,’ Slovo conceded. ‘I detect a lazy tendency in myself of late, of preferring to attack ships from the Moslem world. I don’t say, of course, that we discriminate or run, but given the choice …’

  ‘Your meaning is taken, Captain,’ said the old man warmly. ‘I could cap it with an anecdote from my own experience about a mad Austrian who preferred oblivion embracing a barrel of gunpowder to capture and ransom.’

  They paused as Khair Khaleel-el-Din’s tiring heart was gladdened by the arrival of a meteor shower he had earlier predicted. Neither man knew what it was they were looking at or had any inkling of the cause of the celestial fireworks. Ignorant of whether the Heavens were infinite or mere miles away, they both watched the inter-planetary pebbles flare in final glory within the atmosphere of earth.

  Slovo did not know what to think. He had not yet resolved whether Stoicism permitted moderate enjoyment at the party-tricks of nature.

  By contrast, the older pirate allowed himself to succumb to joy and felt that, however briefly, he had been honoured to dabble his fingertips in the stream of Allah’s thoughts. His life-long reading and all his painstaking calculations had been rewarded and when the storm had quite finished he bowed his head in silent, thankful prayer.

  ‘They came as you said they would,’ Slovo congratulated him. ‘I am very impressed.’

  ‘They came,’ smiled the old man, ‘and, inshallah, they will come again. Neither of us will be here to see them – fortunately it is not given to humans to live for centuries. Allah guides these lights in the sky and directs them to the beautiful world He has made for us. Ah, but perhaps my talk seems over-pious to you?’

  ‘I can see that in accepting meaning and perfection as belonging to God alone, you spare yourself a lot of anguish,’ Slovo rejoined.

  ‘It’s not as good as you make out,’ commented the old pirate. ‘Many a noseless whore looks good at fifty paces. Still, there must be something in your religion – fully half of the ships I command are now captained by Christians. Perhaps one day, when I am safely dead and gone, every so-called Barbary pirate will be an infidel.’

  ‘The difference is,’ said Slovo carefully, ‘that these men you speak of are not Christian at all. They are the foul air which has bubbled up from the fens of Christendom and floated your way. Which is not to decry their seamanship,’ he added swiftly, not wishing to disparage his master’s judgement. ‘However, I would stake my ship not one in a hundred has ever entertained a thought emanating from above the belly-line.’

  The corsair smiled gently, ‘Whereas you …’ he said.

  ‘I did not come to Tripoli just for gold,’ answered Slovo firmly. ‘I came to find my soul and perhaps to save it.’

  ‘I beg of you, Slovo, memorize what you have just said, burn the words into your heart. If you come to be as old as I, you will find that funny things are in short supply. On that day, if you can recall your last words, oh how you will laugh!’

  Slovo could have been offended but simply said, ‘I will do as you ask.’

  ‘I know you will,’ replied Khair Khaleel-el-Din, ‘and that is because you are clever. I like you, Slovo, in so far as I like anything beyond my star-charts. You live
here because your Stoa-whatever …’

  ‘Stoicism,’ said Slovo helpfully.

  ‘… Stoicism accords with what you perceive as our fatalism. You’ll see through that misconception soon enough and move on. Meanwhile, you’re a one-off I can make a great deal of money from. Do you know your ship is one of my most profitable?’

  ‘I surmised as much,’ said Slovo, ‘principally because I do not cheat you.’

  ‘You hand over all that you take,’ agreed Khair Khaleel-el-Din. ‘That is true – and rare. However, you are also more daring and less squeamish than most. I would not want any child of mine to do what you have done, but nevertheless you do have virtue welded to your wickedness and that is a most unusual and useful combination. I shall re-employ you, Christian; your licence is renewed for a further six months.’

  ‘I’m grateful,’ said Slovo impassively.

  ‘That might even be true,’ answered the corsair. ‘We’ll agree and sign off the previous period’s accounts tomorrow, when it is light. You will be pleased with the bonus I have in mind for you.’

  Books, a new knife and a fair-skinned slave to experiment with, thought Slovo – and was instantly ashamed of his weakness.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing.’ Khair Khaleel-el-Din made the question sound so casual that Slovo’s defence mechanisms were immediately alerted. ‘Have you been writing to anyone?’

  ‘No,’ said Slovo very firmly. ‘I agreed not to enter into any communications.’

  ‘Just so,’ replied the pirate-lord. ‘Well then, have you been making enquiries into the higher realms of the Islamic faith?’

  ‘Would that I could,’ said Slovo. ‘My Arabic is still such that I can only dimly hear the apparently sublime cadences of your Qur’an.’