The Drawing of the Dark

At two in the morning the remainder of the crowd was sent home, and the lights were put out as the employees, having decided the clean-up could wait until the next morning, stumbled off to bed. Duffy took a walk out back, but all fires had been put out, his northmen snored peacefully in the stable and there was no evidence of smoldering bombs, so he went back inside.

Somehow he wasn't sleepy, in spite of having slept only four hours the night before, and all the drinking and running around of this evening. He sat down at his table in the dark dining room. As usual, he thought, Aurelianus managed to duck the question I most wanted an answer to, which is: Who or what am un this vast scheme? Why has everyone from Ibrahim to Bacchus taken an interest in me?

He silently lifted his chair further back into the shadows

then, for he heard two low voices in the kitchen conversing in Italian.

'Is there any word from Clement?' asked one.

'As a matter of fact,' replied the other, 'it looks like he will send troops this time. He's even trying for some kind of temporary truce with Luther so that the West can unreservedly unite against the Ottoman Empire.'

The two speakers emerged from the kitchen and started up the stairs without noticing Duffy. One was Aurelianus and the other was the swarthy, curly-haired young man, Jock, who'd pulled his hat down over his face when Duffy had passed him earlier in the evening.

Huh! the Irishman thought; didn't Aurelianus tell me in Venice that he didn't speak Italian? And speaking of Venice, it was there I first saw this Jock fellow, who introduced himself, that Ash Wednesday evening, as Giacomo Gritti. What connections are these?

The sorcerer and the young man ascended the stairs, and their whispering voices died away above. Those two are working together, then? Duffy mused. That would explain why young Gritti saved my life and directed me to a safe ship, that morning on the Venice docks, though it certainly doesn't shed any light on the ambush he and his brothers sprang on me the night before. Unless that fight was somehow staged...?>'It's after ten, you know.'

'I know.' The hunchback looked around the dining room. Most of the revellers had trickled back, but the room's warmth had been let out, and the chilly air reeked of gunpowder - it was a more subdued crowd gulping the beer now.

At the same moment, Duffy strode in from the kitchen and Aurelianus pushed open the street door. Both men looked tired and less than pleased. Without looking at each other they pulled up a chair and a bench at Bluto's table.

'Uh, make that a pitcher, and two more cups, Anna,' the hunchback called. Duffy and Aurelianus nodded agreement.

'Did he leave through the Carinthian gate?' the old man asked after a minute of breath-catching. 'I've got the north one closed and triply guarded.'

Duffy nodded. 'He did. Three minutes before I got there. I followed him south for a half mile, but even in this moonlight I lost his tracks.'

Aurelianus sighed. 'Are you sure it was him?'

'Yes. I used to know him, remember? He came to entice me over to the Turkish side, and to blow this place up. By the way, Bluto, I believe the missing siege mortar is in the middle of that bonfire out back.'

'It is,' Bluto confirmed. 'You can see it through the flames.'

'I wonder,' Duffy sighed, filling a cup with the newly arrived beer, 'why they aimed the thing the wrong way. Was it all a bluff? But why bring the gun at all if that was the case?'

'It wasn't a bluff,' Bluto told him. 'When your north-men saw those four men roll the wagon into the yard, they told them, in Norse and sign-language, to get it the hell out of there. Zapolya's men told them to shut up, so the Vikings turned the wagon around themselves, intending to shove it back out into -the street. That started a fistfight, and apparently these haywagon boys were carrying fire-pots or slowmatches. One of them was knocked unconscious and fell into the hay. A minute later the wagon was in flames, and a minute after that the mortar let go, taking out the fence and two buildings on the next street. Your Vikings figured this was an unfair weapon, so they unsheathed their swords and killed the remaining three intruders immediately.'

Duffy laughed grimly. 'And I thought they'd never earn their keep.'

'He tried to entice you, you say?' Aurelianus asked, leaning forward. 'By what persuasions?'

'Crazy things. He talked like you frequently do, as a matter of fact. That stranger-things-are-possible-than-you-know sort of nonsense.' Duffy refilled his mug. 'He said if I went along and signed up, that Ibrahim would make me Sultan and just depose old Suleiman, I guess.' He shook his head and sighed with genuine regret. 'Poor old John. I remember him before he lost his mind.'

Aurelianus was deep in thought. 'Yes,' he said finally, 'I can see what Ibrahim must have had in mind. A wild gambit indeed! Zapolya's mission was to buy you over or, failing that, to kill you. And to blow up this inn in any case.

'Ibrahim could have sent a better messenger,' Duffyobserved. 'John never got around to mentioning money.

Aurelianus stared at him. 'Money? He offered you the third highest position in the Eastern Empire!' He shook his head. 'Oh hell. I don't know; maybe it's a good thing you persist in regarding these matters in such a mundane light. Maybe that's your strength.'

'Ibrahim wants Duffy here for a sultan?' Bluto snickered, 'I thought sultans were supposed to be teetotallers.'

The Irishman wasn't listening. 'He did seem a little . . .at a loss, right at the end, like a man offering gold coins to a savage whose tribe barters only hides and fish. He said,

"Do you honestly not know who you are?" and then that gun went off.' He turned hesitantly to Aurelianus. 'Do you think...you don't think...Ibrahim really sent him? To offer me... that?'

Aurelianus looked away. 'I can't be sure,' he said, but Duffy got the impression that the old man's uncertainty was feigned.

'Who am I, then? What did he mean by all that?'