The other man was much younger, no more than twenty-five, Bass thought, and no Arab, either. Indeed, he was racially dissimilar from every other man in the room. His spike beard and pencil-thin, drooping mustachios were as black as sin, but where not weathered his skin was fair and the corners of his blue eyes had a slight epicanthic fold. He was as tall as Walid Pasha or Sir Ali—about five feet seven— and his movements were catlike, graceful. Like Sir Ali, he had a small head and flat ears, but he lacked the huge, beaklike nose of the Arab.
Moreover, both men looked and smelled clean, and that raised their personal stocks appreciably in the reckoning of their captor.
“Walid Pasha,” began Bass, “I am informed that you and your ship were forced to sail against England by the minions of Pope Abdul, that you consider yourself to be a neutral and most ill used by Rome. However that may be, you and your ship were fought by and captured by my galleys whilst you sailed in company with the sworn enemies of his majesty, Arthur III Tudor, King of England and Wales.
“I already have been approached by a Burgundian dealer in slaves who has made an offer for the lot of you—you and all your crew. Also, I am reliably informed that Sultan Omar will likely ransom the ship and guns most handsomely, given time.”
The older man gulped once and set his jaw. The expression of the younger, however, did not change.
“But I do not believe in slavery. None of you will be sold into bondage/’ Bass reassured the two. “At the very most, those of your crew who are amenable may be signed on by various of the ships now comprising the Royal Fleet for the duration of this war. At its conclusion, they can likely work their passages back to the Eastern Mediterranean on board merchanters.”
“What of those, Sebastian Bey, who for reasons of health might decide a return to Turkish dominions unwise? Will they, too, be sent away?” Walid Pasha asked diffidently.
Bass smiled. “Sir Ali has explained something of your deadly difficulty to me, Walid Pasha. No, you are more than welcome to remain in England, if you wish. Perhaps I can find a place for you in my household, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Just now, I have an alternate plan to broach, one which may well be of immense benefit to all in this room and many another as well.”
The dusty messenger found the famous (some said infamous) Duce di Bolgia in a shady spot on a hillside just beyond the shattered town his condotta had just conquered and were now despoiling in the savage, time-honored fashion known as intaking. Shouts, the ring of steel, screams of every description and intensity, thuds and crashes and the crackling of new-set fires served as dinner music for the big, beefy captain and certain of his officers as they broke bread on the stony sward beneath the trees.
The messenger himself was not allowed to approach the great captain, of course. He and his escort perforte waited under heavy guard at the foot of the hill while the beribboned, wax-sealed vellum roll was carried up to its intended recipient by a squat, hideously scarred, and fully armed heavy horseman.
Those soldiers set to guard the messenger and his escort eyed the fine, if dusty and travel-stained, clothing and effects of their charges with unconcealed avarice, all the while fingering the well-honed blades of their battle-axes or hefting the short-hafted weapons where they lay, ready to hand, across their saddle pommels, sniggering and exchanging glances and terse comments in Umbrian or some such uncultured dialect. The messenger reflected silently that sworn service to the household of a Papal legate could take an unsuspecting gentleman to some strange and exceedingly dangerous places. After another wary look around at the murderous pack surrounding him and his escort, he silently consigned his soul to heaven, although he kept his face totally blank lest the ill-born peasant dogs derive pleasure from the belief that they had frightened a Roman nobleman.
“Hmmph!” the messenger thought to himself as he watched the condottiere on the hillside. “He can read. Maybe there’s something to those tales of him being gentleborn after all. Although 1 for one have never considered it all that heinous that he might have hacked out his patents of nobility by the strength of his arm and the weight of his steel—hell, put to it, it’s probable that every noble house in the known world began just that way, a strong, ruthless man with a sharp sword and enough followers to consolidate his victories. Perhaps his own house . . .”
But the burly figure of Duce Timoteo had arisen. One big hand still clutching the message, he waved the other imperiously. “Ho, sergente, escort the signore up here to me. And the rest of you, those peacocks and their horses belong to him who may be our next employer; be ye all warned.”
The messenger dismounted, threw his travel cloak over his sweaty saddle, and followed it with his dust veil. With some slow deliberation, he took his sword from the travel scabbard buckled to the saddle skirt and inserted the sheathed weapon snugly into his baldric. Only then did he turn and set his feet to the pathway that led up the hillside to the knot of men who sat or squatted under the silver-leaved olive trees. When a few feet separated them, the duce growled in a
tone that could have been friendly or not, “And who might you be, boy? You’re no clerk, by the cut of you, no damned Moor, either. You seem to have a measure of guts. Can’t you find a better employer than a pack of accursed Africans? Or do you simply like old Abdul’s brand of sodomy? Eh?”
Gritting his teeth against an intemperate reply—after all, his battle rapier would avail him little against these mostly armored professional soldiers and their broadswords, wheellock pistols, and other weapons—the messenger swept off his sweat-soggy hat and thrust a leg forward in a bow.
“Your grace, I have the honor to be Sir Ugo D’Orsini, a knight of the household of his eminence, Cardinal Bartolomeo D’Este, Archbishop of Palermo.”
Before any more words might be exchanged, there came the clatter of hooves on cobblestones and a chorus of deep-voiced shouts from within the town. Then, from out the shattered gate, burst a big white mule at a full, jarring gallop. Bestriding his saddleless back, bare thighs and knees gripping the muscular barrel while small, unshod heels kicked at the flanks to encourage greater speed, was a naked red-haired woman. Waist-length hair billowed out behind her, and this hair was her undoing.
The bareheaded, half-armored horseman pursuing her spurred his warhorse close enough behind to grasp a big handful of that billowing hair and dragged her from her insecure seat. Then, while still she was a bit stunned, he secured her wrists with a length of thong and deposited his catch, belly down, across the neck of his mount. Laughing, that black-bearded man reined about and headed back toward the town at a fast walk, handling his reins high while the busy fingers of his free hand explored the juncture of the woman’s now-thrashing legs and his ears were assailed by her screams of outrage and the vile curses she gasped up at him.
“Better not try to kiss her, Gilberto,” shouted one of the officers on the hillside. “A woman like that bit my cousin’s tongue off!”
“With Gilberto’s luck,” put in another, “it’ll be something far more important than a tongue the strumpet’s teeth meet in!”
“Be sure to keep the baggage’s hands tied tight,” yet another officer advised. “She strikes me as the stripe of an eye-gouger with those claws she has on the ends of her fingers.”
“I just hope he’s careful in there,” still another of the gathered officers muttered to no one in particular. “Spanish bugger owes me eleven ducats.”
“Never you fear about our Gilberto, Andrea,” chuckled a nearby man. “I’ve soldiered with him for many a year and I’m here to tell you that he can gentle any doxy, highborn or low, and in damn-all time, too. They soon learn just who their master is! Why, I recall this woman in—”
But just then the duce cleared his throat and silence fell.
“Gentlemen, here’s the chance we’ve all been champing at our bits to see.” He flourished the beribboned parchment once and continued, “With any sort of luck, we have sacked our last, piss-poor Sicilian town for his parsimonious highness of Naples. This hints at an offer of employment somewhere outside Italy. Now, while it’s signed by the Archbishop of Palermo, we all know that he alone could never afford my hire or yours, so without doubt bigger fish are involved covertly, and no thinking man would need to overly tax his brain to determine one powerful enough to use a cardinal, a noble-born prince of the church, for his stalking-horse.