Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Five: Rhodes Read Online Free PDF Page B

forgot his position as a Turk when he heard a man speak in English – and heard a woman answer him.
    Swan walked away hurriedly lest he betray himself. After two turnings and crossing a broad thoroughfare, he was in yet another set of wandering alleys, no wider than his arm. Here the shops were mere awnings. And here were scraps of antiquities – a head of Aphrodite in marble, a seal carved in quartz, another in bloodstone. Swan eyed them all, collected a few and began to dicker with the owner.
    He saw the man signal someone behind him, but made the mistake of assuming it was the signal to another seller.
    He made a further error in taking his purse out of his leather bag – and disclosing the sum of ten gold ducats. But Swan was canny enough to see the change come over the dealer’s face, like tidal water covering the sands. He flinched and turned – and saw the stick.
    He ducked, and took the blow high on his left arm, and let out a startled squeal of pure pain.
    He got his right hand on his dagger, and in so doing lost his purse. The silk bag landed and opened, and a gold ducat rolled out.
    There were six of them, at least.
    A club struck his shoulder. The left arm was numb, but the man lingered too long and Swan kicked him in the groin with the whole weight of his foot.
    His life was saved by the second man’s greed. Instead of killing him, the man had knelt to pick up the coin. A third man, tall and black, swung a pole or a spear at his head and Swan tried to back up a step and fell over the kneeling man. On instinct, he rammed his dagger into another footpad’s shin. The man screamed. Swan got a hand on his belt and the same motion that pulled Swan to his feet helped him put the other man on the ground.
    He took a blow on his back that hurt like fire, and riposted with a sweeping dagger blow that dropped the tall African, at least temporarily. The others backed away and Swan, his left arm tingling, picked up one of the abandoned clubs. He menaced the pedlar with his dagger and swept the seal stones into his leather bag – the purse would have to stay on the ground.
    His eyes went left, then right. He pivoted, and looked over his shoulder.
    The pedlar rolled the table over on him. He leaped back, and the man shrieked, ‘A Turk! A Turk! A Turk has raped my son!’
    When a somewhat bedraggled Swan went back aboard his galley – he’d run through half of Alexandria, and taken several hard blows – he cleaned up and found himself summoned to the stern cabin to translate for his captain.
    Fra Tommaso met him on the main deck. The rowers – all professionals – were ashore, behaving like oarsmen, and Swan, whose ribs ached, wished he had chosen to join them.
    ‘You have two remarkable black eyes,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘You speak English, I gather.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Swan could barely think. He’d survived the encounter by not using his weapon again and by running – apparently the right tactic when set upon by six men and an angry mob. His stolen gemstones were safe below, but he’d lost the dagger and all the trinkets he’d purchased earlier in the day as well as the ten ducats he’d carried.
    He’d learned that Egyptians hated Turks. Probably more than they hated Christians.
    ‘The English ship is making trouble,’ Fra Tommaso said. ‘I want you to explain to them.’
    As it proved, the English ship was making trouble merely by existing, and the Genoese wanted to storm it and kill the entire crew. A very voluble Genoese officer, who was never introduced, stormed and raged at the English merchant, Messire Richard Sturmy. Sturmy stood silently with his hands behind his back like an errant schoolboy. Swan liked him immediately.
    The Genoese didn’t offer a point of view or a legal quibble. He merely made threats – threat after threat, so fast Swan could scarcely keep up.
    ‘Tell this sodomite that if his wife and child are aboard, I’ll rape them and sell them to the Turks. Tell him—’ The