Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Three: Constantinople Read Online Free PDF

filled with the same vague piety that infected him when he was around Cardinal Bessarion.
    The woman smiled. ‘Yes. I suppose.’ She stepped back. ‘How are you getting us out of here?’
    ‘How long have you been here?’ Swan asked.
    ‘Since the siege.’ Apollinaris shrugged. ‘Eventually we’d have abandoned the head and left the city. There’s no getting it out.’
    ‘The Turks know it is missing. And they’ll stop at nothing to get it.’ This from the older man.
    Swan felt foolish, but something made him approach the object on his knees. He shuffled along until he reached the low table, and he opened the reliquary – it had a magnificent door, like the door to a miniature cathedral.
    Inside was a brown skull. A cross had been inlaid into the smooth bone of the forehead. Otherwise, it was just a skull, and a very old one.
    ‘They say that whoever has the head of Saint George cannot be harmed by monsters or demons, by weapons, even by torture,’ said the prettier of the two dancers. She bowed. ‘I’m Irene.’
    ‘And I’m Andromache,’ said the other. ‘We are acrobats. And actors.’
    Swan smiled and stood. ‘You’re the old woman at the gate.’
    She smiled back. ‘And you are the Turk.’
    The giant bowed. ‘Constantios, at your service,’ he said, stiffly.
    The older man bowed as well. ‘Nikephorus,’ he said. He smiled bitterly. ‘Nikephorus Dukas.’
    Swan tore his eyes from the relic. ‘Of the noble Dukas family?’ he asked.
    ‘One small branch, devoted to learning. We cannot all be busy ruining the empire.’ He shrugged as if his words were of no account. Then he pointed at the skull. ‘Familiarity will make you more comfortable with it,’ he 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,