The Knights of Rhodes. Bo Giertz

He did not ask for me or anyone else either.”

      The Chancellor gave his slave an inquiring look. Really—he would have been free, if only a stingy old uncle had come out with the money.

      “I heard it from the mate on the fuste they took to Lango last week. He is from Galata like me. He is not strong so he was sold and Don Esteban bought him. We met when I went there with the clementines.

      The Chancellor smiled sternly.

      “Really, you go and chat in the kitchen. That virtual little spy center? You know that that is forbidden.”

      “Yes, Lord. And that you would have done the same in my shoes.”

      “You say more than is wise. And precisely what I am thinking. What will you give for your freedom?”

      “Lord, the common usually pay a thousand aspri.”

      “For simple people, yes. But you are rich.”

      “Then I will give double.”

      The Chancellor gave him a quick glance. This was not the normal bargain. Just as well—he was short on time, as always.

      “And then I ask. When can you pay?”

      “Lord that is the problem. Only you can free it to me. I have to travel to Constantinople.”

      “Impossible. Why?”

      “They think that I am dead. If I don’t emerge now, then one of my half cousins and his half brother will come and collect the inheritance. Kadin will take most of it. But if I come home, the matter is clear and I will come back with the money myself. I swear it on the prophet.”

      The Chancellor sat unsettled and looked out the window. What was this? A very unusual request. An unusually transparent swindle, so transparent that it just might be the truth.

      What should he do? Ask Don Esteban to interrogate his new cook? Try to control what he says? If he still says anything.

      He looked at the Turk. Calm as always, superior and secure in his paradise and his better religion.

      Better? That could be tested. This was the occasion.

      “Ibrahim, I accept your offer and I trust you. You give me your oath on the prophet that you will come back in four months and have the money with you. And if you do not have the money together, then you come back without it and stay in my service until it is paid off. Clear?”

      The Chancellor sat quiet for a while. The slave had gone, maybe with just a hint of new vigor in his long stride.

      Better religion? We will see. It is worth the risk.

      August 1521

      Jannis, the cook on the Grand Carrack stood and prepared lunch in the burning heat of August. The powerful ship, the Queen of the Mediterranean, headed with a fresh west wind to Nice, accompanied by three small caravels like puppies behind a St. Bernard. Yesterday, she left Marseille heavy laden with cannonballs instead of stone for ballast, splendid bronze cannons stored in the cargo hold, and every conceivable nook and cranny stuffed with lead shot and sacks of saltpeter, metal helmets, harquebuses, barrels of sulfur, and vats of wine—and to top it all off there was the new Grand Master’s personal property. His Eminence, brother Phillippe de l’Isle Adam himself was onboard.

      So Jannis wanted to make his very best lunch. It was Friday, a day of fasting, and the crew’s bean soup boiled in huge kettles. But Jannis wanted to give his new Grand Master something better. He thought about preparing marides, small deep fried fish to delight his Grand Master and earn himself some well-deserved recognition.

      Jannis stood dipping the fingerling fish with a ladle into the oil that simmered and bubbled in a three-foot pot of burning coals in the huge sandbox on the deck right where the forecastle stood like a tower with its two cannon decks shaded by a large wood bow directly over Janis’s sandbox—that was the only place open fire was allowed on board.

      The oil hissed and sputtered, and the intensive smell enticed a circle of spectators, sailors from Rhodes and Lango, the enlisted people from Zaragoza and Flanders, and then the perpetually hungry and omnipresent little hired hands, who kept the ship’s cabin tidy, but most of the time had to keep out so that the lords would be able to deliberate undisturbed.

      Naturally, they spoke about the Grand Master. What kind he was. “An unlucky one,” said one of the Spaniards. “Decent but scrupulous,” said the cabin boy, who after these two days knew that he had an envied expert knowledge.

      “There is no one I would rather have next to me if the Turks board,” said one of the sailors. “But he is an unlucky man,” the Spaniard persisted. “Just look at the caravel we should have had with us. Just finished and just off the land in the midst of the Rhone. And immediately it leaked and sank to the bottom like a stone.”

      He shook his head.

      “Muy malo. He who has commanded should have his turn. It is almost the most important.”

      Some of the Italians nodded: cartivo augurio, spiteful warning.

      The talk continued while the Grand Carrack heaved in the sea as it began to get rough. The long projecting forecastle raised its nose like a swordfish to the sky only to dive under the white caps the next second. One needed good sea legs to keep his balance. The cook did not have good sea legs. He lurched forward. He tried to stand with the ladle in the pot. It turned over and the boiling oil spread out over the coal fire, continuing like a flood of hissing flames out over the deck. This set sticks of wood on fire along with ropes and rags, which unaccustomed feet stumbled over and dragged with them, and oakum that the artillery had left after their last salute. A short ell hung above the cook’s laundry, dry and fine, just ready to be taken down and right above a flagstaff. In a second it was all swept up in crackling flames. The wind blew the flames over and up into the castle. There was new oakum there, ready for next time it was needed. There was also a little barrel of gunpowder, only enough for two shots but still sufficient to make a fireworks show of spurting fire brooms, circling splinters, and sooty rags of old sail cloth.

      The whole fore cabin was now swept up in belching sulfuric smoke. The fire climbed up the starboard’s shroud to the foresail’s top. The shroud had just received new cranks, clean, dry, and newly tarred with no salt crust. Flames hopped playfully between them and climbed quickly up the mast.

      Screaming men were forced into the cabin’s forebill. They threw their arms up, shielding their faces from the heat. One soldier who could swim jumped overboard on the portside where one of the following boats was already closing in to help. Two others threw off their gear to follow.

      “Stop there!”

      The men looked up. It was a voice that demanded immediate obedience. All obeyed.