Samos, April 1438
The Saint Pelagios came in past the breakwater. The Chian merchant was already moored at the inner mole, and her crew stopped their work to watch the galley settle alongside.
Nestor counted the holes in her foresail, four of them, one the size of a man's head, and along her starboard rail a four-foot stretch of splintered planking no one had patched yet. A small crowd had gathered on the quay, two Gattilusio men in livery, a harbor clerk with a slate, a few idle sailors, and a barefoot boy eating a piece of dried fish.
Matteo came up on Nestor's left. He had crossed in the longboat and smelled of pitch and bread.
"She came in at first light," he said. "Master is a Chian. Says he was hailed off Ikaria yesterday afternoon and chased south of the channel. They came alongside once, and he has a man with a stove-in shoulder below."
"Single ship?"
"Single. A galley, long and low. Black above the wales."
Nestor watched a rope come off the merchant's bow and a Gattilusio sailor catch it and bend it round the bollard. The deck under his feet still moved with the swell, though he had been at sea four weeks now and could stand on stone without his stomach turning.
The harbor clerk came over to the mole and waited to be acknowledged. Nestor nodded, and the man held out a wax tablet with the day's harbor entries — two coastal caïques, a Venetian round ship from Negroponte already gone at dawn, a Gattilusio dispatch boat from Mytilene still on her lines, and the Chian merchant Agios Nikolaos, master Theodoros Vlastos, four hands, one wounded.
"Where is the master?" Nestor said.
"In my house," one of the Gattilusio men said. He had a Lesbiote accent and a small finger missing. "Eating. I sent for the surgeon for the other one."
"Bring him to me when he is finished. On the Pelagios."
The man bowed and turned away. Matteo watched the merchant's broken rail for a moment.
"It might be one I have heard of. A black-painted galley out of Cyprus. Two of my factors mentioned her last year. She does not usually come this far north."
"You are sure?"
"I am not sure. But the description is hers."
Nestor watched a gull settle on the merchant's mast and lift again. The Gattilusio garrison flag on the harbor tower turned over in the wind and came back. He thought of what Laskaris had told him at Gallipoli the night before he had sailed, that he should not go looking for a fight, and that most days at sea he would not need to. He had repeated it to himself on the third evening of the patrol and again on the fifth, and laughed at himself the second time.
"We sail tonight," he said. "I want to be south of Patmos by morning."
Matteo looked at the second Roman galley, Agios Phokas, just then coming through the mole with her oars feathered.
"There is moon enough," he said. "I will tell my men."
The Chian master was a short man in his fifties, shaved, with the broken capillaries of a long drinker who had recently stopped. He came aboard with the Gattilusio man behind him and stood on Nestor's after-deck holding his cap in both hands.
"They came on us out of the sun," he said. "Around the second hour after noon. We were running before a north-easter and they had the heel of us before I had a real account of them."
Nestor had set out a cup of watered wine. The Chian drank half of it without noticing. Demetrios, the Pyrvelos sergeant, a stocky Thracian with a missing front tooth, stood by the mast and listened with his arms folded.
"You said she was black."
"Black above the wales, white below. No flag I could see when she came up. There was a man on her foredeck in a red coat and a striped shirt. They shouted in Italian when they came alongside."
"How many?"
"Eighteen or twenty on deck. More at the oars."
"Cannon?"
"A small piece on the foredeck. Brass, set on a stock and not a carriage. They did not fire it. They did not need to."
"What did they take?"
"The strongbox, my second's chain, three rolls of Lesbos cloth, and the boy who was on watch when they hooked us." The Chian's hand tightened on the cup. "He is fourteen. His name is Michael. His mother lives on Chios. I have to go back and tell her."
The deck was quiet, and Demetrios looked at the planks while a halyard slapped once against the mast.
"They took only the one?"
"Only him. They said a number. I thought they would take more, but the man in the striped shirt looked at us all and pointed at the boy and said something in Catalan to the man behind him, and they took him and went over the side. He was strong. He pulled an oar in calm. They saw that."
Nestor set his hand on the rail.
"South after that?"
"South-southwest. Under sail and oar both. The wind was fair for them and I was running the other way."
Nestor thanked him, gave him a small purse from the chapter chest with two Roman silver pieces in it for the surgeon and the patching, and watched him go down the side. Matteo had come up the ladder during the account and was leaning against the rail. When the longboat had pushed off, he unfolded his arms.
"He shaved off his cargo to hide what was insured. The taking of the boy is true."
Nestor watched the longboat pull back toward the mole.
"It changes nothing we can reach tonight."
They sailed before the second watch. The Gattilusio garrison commander came down to the mole to see them off and gave Nestor a small jar of olives in oil and a folded message for Palamede in case any ship of his squadron should pass Mytilene before the Pelagios did. By the time the Pelagios cleared the breakwater under oars and shook out her foresail, the masts of the ships behind them were going dark.
Matteo's San Giorgio took the seaward station, the Agios Phokas came into line two cables astern, and the rowers settled into the long stroke. Nestor went to the after-rail and watched Samos shrink.
South of Patmos
They saw the sail at the third hour of the next afternoon.
The wind had backed in the night and come up fresh from the north-northeast, and by midday Pelagios was running before it under foresail with her oars shipped and the rowers eating bread on the benches. Nestor was on the foredeck with Stratis, the Lemnian master, when the masthead boy called down. They both looked up first, then south. The sail was a thumb-width over the horizon, hull-down, with the dark upper strake just showing in the trough of the swell.
"That is her," Stratis said.
"That is a galley."
"That is her." Stratis shaded his eyes. "She is making for the Patmos channel. Thirty cables on us, perhaps more. We will not close it before she is in among the rocks."
"We will close some of it."
Stratis grunted and turned to the bosun. The sail came down off the yard in two breaths, the oars went out in three, and Pelagios went from the long slide of sail to the short hard drive of the oars, the motion under Nestor's feet turning to a hammer. Agios Phokas did the same a beat slower, and San Giorgio was already turning to take the western flank.
Nestor went forward to the cannons.
Pelagios mounted three on her foredeck: a six-pounder centred behind the prow on a trail-sledge that took the recoil into a heavy oak block, and the two four-pounders flanking it, set obliquely to bear within ten degrees of the bow. The four-pounders were from the new Glarentza casting and had Luca's mark on their breeches. Ioannis, the gun-captain, was at the central piece with his rammer's boy beside him and his slow-match glowing in the linstock-cup. He looked up when Nestor came forward and gave a small nod.
"How long?"
"Half an hour to a long shot. An hour to a useful one. If she does not turn."
"She will turn at the channel mouth."
"She will. So a long shot, then. And likely no more."
Nestor nodded and went back to the helm.
The chase ran for nearly two hours. The corsair held straight before the wind for the first hour, gaining nothing and losing nothing. By the second hour Pelagios had closed enough that her hull was visible from the foredeck: long and low, black above the strake exactly as the Chian had said, twenty-four oars a side, a small brass piece on her foredeck that no one fired. The man in the striped shirt showed on her after-deck for half a minute, then went forward and was lost behind the mast.
Patmos rose out of the sea on the corsair's bow. The white walls of the monastery on the height showed first, with the dark cliff of the headland under them and a line of pine going down to the water. The channel between Patmos and the small islet to the north opened slowly, narrow and dark, the swell breaking white on the rocks at its mouth.
"Now or not at all," Stratis said.
Nestor went forward. Ioannis was already laying the central six-pounder, working his quoin with a wedge of oak, his eye level with the breech. Pelagios's bow rose on a swell, hung, came down. Ioannis touched his match.
The shot went long. Nestor saw the splash a full ship's length beyond the corsair, white against the dark water. He was already turning to the starboard four-pounder when its gun-captain fired without waiting. That shot went short, but not by much. The water-spout came up close enough to the corsair's port quarter that Nestor saw the spray drift across her after-deck. The third gun, the port four-pounder, fired half a beat after, and its spout was close enough to wet the corsair's port oars.
An oarsman on the after thwart turned and looked at Pelagios directly, young, his face caught for a moment, then bent back to his oar as the corsair leaned hard to starboard into the channel mouth.
By the time Pelagios came up to the headland the channel was empty. The corsair had taken the southern side, where the rocks ran out underwater for a half-cable from the cliff and the swell broke white and showed the danger and a heavier galley would not follow without losing her bottom. Stratis put the helm over and held Pelagios to the cleaner water on the north side, and they came through into the open bay south of Patmos with the sun in their faces and the corsair gone.
Nestor stood on the foredeck and watched the empty water for a long minute.
"She will be in the islets off Leros by morning watch," Stratis said behind him.
"And in the channels of Kalymnos by tomorrow night. We will not see her again."
"No."
"We can sweep south."
"We will sweep south, and then we will go to Rhodes. The letter does not wait."
He went below and sat on the chest under the after-window for a while with his hands on his knees. Then he came back up and watched the monastery slide past on the port quarter, and the bell from it began to ring for nones as Pelagios cleared the southern point.
Rhodes, three days later
The harbor of Rhodes was guarded by a chain. It was lifted for them only after Pelagios had hove to outside the mole for the better part of an hour, and Nestor had sent his ensign across in the longboat with the letter from Constantine's chancery and a sealed credential from Laskaris. The chain came down with a slow grind of iron over stone, and the three galleys went in line astern between the two great towers and into the inner basin under the eyes of two Hospitaller galleys at their moorings and a half-dozen smaller craft of every nation that traded east of Crete. There was a Catalan flag on a moored galiot near the inner quay.
The town climbed up the slope behind the harbor in tiers of pale stone. The seaward walls were faced with cut blocks and showed the new work of the last fifty years, with mortar lines fresh enough to see from the deck and the parapet running unbroken from tower to tower. Higher up the inner enceinte was older but kept, and a Hospitaller pennant flew from the keep. The smell of the town came down on the breeze: soap, woodsmoke, dyed wool.
Matteo had brought San Giorgio in last and had gone ashore first, by his own privilege as a Genoese subject. By the time Nestor's longboat reached the steps below the customs house, Matteo was already there in a clean shirt with his hair wet, talking with one of the Order's port officers.
"They will see you tomorrow," he said when Nestor came up. "Not the Grand Master. He is not receiving foreign envoys this week. The Draper will receive you in the audience hall in the morning."
"Who?"
"Raphael Zaplana. Catalan. Competent. Speaks good Greek and better Latin. He will hear you out."
"And?"
"And he will say what the Order needs him to say. You will not get the corsair from him. You know that."
"Yes."
They walked up the lane to the inn that the Order kept for foreign captains. The town was full of Catalan voices and Greek voices and the heavier accents of Provençal-French knights, and a couple of men in the plain robes of Jewish lenders passed them going the other way without looking up. Nestor looked at the walls and at the angle of the bastions and at the placement of the artillery embrasures on the seaward face, and made notes in his head as he had been told to do.
The audience hall was tall and cold even in April. The walls were hung with the banners of the langues of the Order — France, Auvergne, Provence, Italy, Aragon, England, Germany — and the floor was paved in alternating squares of grey and white marble worn smooth in a path from the door to the dais. Two clerks stood at a table on the right with paper and wax and a small bronze inkwell shaped like a lion. A serjeant-at-arms stood behind the dais with his hands clasped over the pommel of his sword. The morning sun came through a high window and laid a long white panel of light across the floor.
Raphael Zaplana stood on the dais in the black habit of the Order with the white eight-pointed cross at his breast. He was perhaps fifty, narrow-faced, clean-shaven, with grey at the temples and the upright posture of a man who had been a soldier before he had been a draper. He inclined his head as Nestor approached and indicated the place where Nestor was to stand with the smallest movement of one hand.
"Captain Gregoras," he said. His Greek was good, if accented. "You bring a letter from the Lord of the Romans."
"I do, Excellency. From the Emperor."
Nestor took the letter from the leather case at his belt and held it out. One of the clerks came forward and received it with both hands and bore it to Zaplana, who looked at the seal but did not break it, and gave it back to the clerk to be set on the table.
"It will go to the Grand Master this afternoon."
"Thank you, Excellency."
"You bring word from the Emperor on the matter of the letter?"
"On the matter of the letter, only that it concerns the friendship of the Romans and the Order, and the suppression of piracy in the Aegean. The Emperor's particulars are within the seal."
Zaplana inclined his head a fraction. "And on your own account, Captain?"
"On my own account, Excellency, I have business at Rhodes that touches the same matter." Nestor steadied his hands at his sides. "Three days ago I gave chase to a galley that had taken a Chian merchant off Ikaria. She was black above the wales, with a Catalan complement. She lost us in the islets off Patmos. I would ask the Order whether she has put in here in the last week, or whether any ship matching her has."
Zaplana listened without moving. When Nestor had finished he was silent for a moment, and Nestor heard the small noises of the room — the scratch of a clerk's pen, the shift of the serjeant's belt, a fly working at the high window.
"The Order shares the Emperor's concern. Piracy is the burden of all who keep the sea, and the Catalan houses, as you will know, are not always governed by the Crown of Aragon as fully as the Crown might wish. As to the ship you describe — we have not seen her at Rhodes."
"Excellency."
"The Order's galleys patrol the southern approaches and report no unusual activity this season. The Aegean north of Cos is not within our regular sweep. If your captains gain further intelligence of the ship, the Order will of course examine it. We do not, of course, inquire into the cargoes of foreign merchants beyond what the harbor regulations require — that is a matter between the merchants and their consuls, as is, I am sure, the case in the harbor of Constantinople, where I understand a great many Genoese vessels come and go without the Emperor's chancery accounting for every chest."
"The Emperor accounts for the chests of his own subjects, Excellency."
"As does the Order." Zaplana inclined his head. "I will report your concerns to the Grand Master with the letter. The Order's reply will reach the Emperor through the usual channels in due course. In the meantime, Captain, you and your captains are guests of the Order while you remain in this harbor. Anything you require for the comfort of your men or the repair of your ships will be provided."
"The Emperor is grateful for the Order's hospitality."
"And the Order is grateful for the Emperor's friendship."
Nestor bowed. Zaplana inclined his head a second time, his fingers on the rail of the dais and not moving, and the audience was over.
Outside the hall the sun was full and the courtyard smelled of citrus and dust and the soap that was being made somewhere in the lower town. Matteo was waiting under the colonnade with one of the Order's secretaries, a young man with ink on his cuff who bowed to Nestor and went away without speaking. Matteo looked at Nestor's face and did not ask.
They walked back toward the harbor through the upper town. The streets were narrow and white and the sun came down between the houses in hard bars. A woman was beating wool in a doorway. Two Hospitaller serjeants in black tabards passed them at the upper turning and went up toward the keep. At the harbor gate Nestor stopped and looked back along the line of the seaward wall and counted the embrasures and the angle of the demi-lune that protected the southern face.
"Strong walls," he said.
"Strong walls. Good towers. They have spent on this place."
"They have."
Matteo paused for a step and looked up at the keep with his hands in his belt. "It will hold a long time when the Mamluks come, but not this year. The Order has been raiding their coast for ten years, and the Sultan in Cairo will not stand it forever." He nodded at a sign over a doorway at the foot of the lane — Hebrew letters above the Latin. "Those men know already."
They walked down to the quay. The longboat was waiting at the steps. Nestor stopped before he stepped down, and looked once more at the moored Catalan galiot at the inner quay, and at the seaward walls running clean and white from tower to tower, and at the Hospitaller pennant on the keep above. Then he stepped down into the longboat.
"We sail at the evening," he said to Stratis when he came back aboard. "Set a course for Constantinople by way of Lesbos. I want to be at Mytilene in five days."
"Yes, Captain."
"Get me paper from the chest. I have a report to write."
Stratis went to find it. Nestor stood at the after-rail and watched the chain go up across the harbor mouth as a Catalan merchantman put out for the south. The Hospitaller flag on the keep moved once and was still.
Site update: the timeline page now runs all the way through the events of Book Two, and it's loaded with campaign maps so you can follow the marches as they happen. Go take a look! Empire Rewritten Timeline