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

our monks were writing detailed encyclopedias of classical learning.’ He shook his head. ‘Classical learning comes and goes in fashion and tolerance,’ he said, somewhat peevishly. As if continuing his train of thought, he said, ‘I feared all the wrong things, and now my whole world is gone.’
    ‘Heraklitus was a philosopher like Aristotle? Like Plato?’ Swan asked.
    ‘Earlier, I think,’ Nikephorus said. ‘Not my field.’
    Swan looked up at the scrolls. Hundreds of them. ‘ Are any of these Aristotle?’ he asked.
    ‘All this,’ Irene said, smiling. Twenty scrolls sat in niches under a small marble bust. ‘This is an ancient statue of the man himself.’
    Swan had that haunted feeling again. He took a scroll down.
    An hour later, a dirty Christian beggar stopped a small Jewish beggar on the street.
    ‘I need to get a message to King David,’ the Christian said.
    The boy nodded. ‘Sure, boss,’ he said, in Greek.
    ‘Just knock it in,’ Peter said.
    Swan didn’t like waste. He prowled around the wellhead, because if they knocked it to pieces, it would be obvious to everyone how they’d escaped. And Swan liked to leave mystery behind him, when he could. It made for a better prank. A finer jest. And practically speaking, while he wasn’t sure who would be following him, he had a feeling . . .
    On hands and knees, he found the deep crack that ran around the heavy marble block that held the cast bronze and stone wellhead. Under the dry-sink, he found a pair of holes in the marble, cut in at an angle.
    Even better, leaning against the wall, he found two iron bars which fitted into the wellhead block.
    It took four of them to lever it up. When they were done, they had an opening the size of a small cart, leading down into the darkness.
    After dark, a wagon rolled up to the gate. Peter and Constantios watched it with bows drawn, while the two dancers covered the street and Swan went out the door into the courtyard.
    Isaac slipped off the wagon box. ‘A boat?’ he asked. ‘It’s not even illegal to get a boat. You summoned me to get you a boat?’ He glared. ‘You know who I am?’
    ‘Simon means to sell me to the Turks,’ Swan said. ‘You?’
    Isaac froze.
    ‘I find that sometimes this sort of talk saves time,’ Swan said. ‘There are more plots here than in the Bible. I want to make a straight deal. I will give you some very valuable items and some information, and you will provide me with this boat and take a single message to the Venetian quarter. And we’ll part friends, and be available to help each other another time. Simon won’t ever get to betray me, which he’ll live to be glad of. And I’ll survive to take your letters back to Venice.’
    ‘Why would I need you to carry my letters?’ Isaac asked.
    ‘I assume you plan to play the Venetian markets based on the Sultan’s invasion of the Morea.’ Swan shrugged. ‘I would.’
    Isaac laughed. ‘Not bad. Why trust me?’ he asked.
    Swan shrugged. ‘It saves time. And if everyone here is going to sell me, I’m dead. I have to trust someone.’
    ‘I agree.’ Isaac rubbed his beard. ‘I’m just not sure anyone has ever chosen me as the one to trust before.’ He laughed. ‘I like you, mad Englishman.’
    Swan grinned. ‘Come back in two days. Everything you find in the house is yours.’ Swan handed over a note. ‘See to it this goes to Alessandro in the Venetian quarter. Like your packet – there’s nothing in it worth reading.’
    Isaac smiled mirthlessly. ‘Balthazar said he liked you,’ he said. ‘So I will extend the courtesy of honesty. I can give you a day. Perhaps the two you want. Then I have to sell you, or I look . . . bad – to the Grand Turk.’
    ‘If you can make it two,’ Swan said, ‘I will count it an honest deal.’
    Isaac bowed. ‘I will do my best.’
    Swan took his hand, and they embraced briefly.
    An hour later, the boat was floating, fully loaded, in the current.
    Then they all climbed up one