The Tournament (30 page)

‘Hmmm,’ she said, pausing in one such chamber. Three archways branched off it in three different directions. ‘Now. This one is underneath the queen’s quarters, which means we must take that passageway to get to the Sultan’s private bath . . .’

We continued in this fashion for some time until Zubaida stopped suddenly in a new cistern. Evidently, she had taken a wrong turn somewhere because when she stopped, she spun around with a confused and angry look on her face.

‘Damnation. I must have . . . oh . . .
oh
—’

Her face went pale as she saw something over my shoulder.

‘I’m terribly sorry . . . I didn’t mean to—’

I turned . . .

. . . to find myself confronted by several pairs of eyes emerging from the darkness, malevolent eyes that belonged to some residents of these caves, all of them dressed in rags and advancing menacingly toward us.

THE GROUP OF DANGEROUS-LOOKING souls stepped into the light of Zubaida’s torch and I was shocked to discover that they were children.

There were perhaps twelve of them and they ranged in age from about eight to sixteen. They all had grubby, dirty faces and the hollow eyes of the starving.

I took in the grim cavern around me: islands made of garbage rose above the waterline and on these islands were a collection of crude shanties and burrows. We had stumbled upon their home. For these children, a squalid life in the dark was better than one on the streets of Constantinople.

A tall rangy boy who was the biggest of the group stepped forward and said in common Greek to Zubaida, ‘You know not to come here, rich girl.’

‘Omar, please, I’m so sorry,’ Zubaida stammered. ‘We . . . we got lost.’

The boy—Omar—stood over her, stared lasciviously at her chest. ‘You know that no intruder leaves our cavern without paying a tax. I hope for your sakes that you both have something to trade other than your bodies.’

Zubaida looked like a trapped dog. She wore only her light cloak over her very short dress—one that she had clearly put on in anticipation of a different kind of carnal adventure that night. She had nothing else on her person and certainly nothing to trade.

As this exchange took place, I gazed at the cluster of children gathered behind the taller Omar. Small girls with frightened eyes, little boys with defiant frowns, all dressed in soil-covered rags. And then among them I saw, not with a little shock, someone I recognised—

But at that moment the leader, Omar, rounded on me. ‘And what of you, little girl? I have not seen you before. You are a visitor to the palace? From whence do you hail?’

‘I am from England,’ I said firmly in Greek. ‘Where I am the daughter of the king,’ I added, thinking a royal addendum might play to my advantage. It was not a good move.

The boy grinned through broken teeth. ‘The daughter of a king, eh? Let me add to your education then: royal blood means nothing in the deep places of the world. You are a long way from home, princess.’ His eyes ran over my wrists and neck, as if searching for jewellery. ‘My question still stands: what can you give me in exchange for safe passage out of here?’

Like Zubaida, I had nothing of value on my person, no rings, necklaces or coins.

My eyes, however, found those of the individual I knew among the gang of lost children—another tall boy, thin and gangly, perhaps fifteen years of age.

I said boldly, ‘I can give
him
information about the deaths of his parents.’

‘Information!’ the leader spat. ‘That’s not going to be—’

The boy I recognised stepped forward.

‘Wait,’ he said softly.

Omar turned, surprised that his leadership might be challenged in front of outsiders. But the second boy—as I had noted—was of roughly his age and height and thus a legitimate challenger to his authority.

‘I would like to hear what she has to say.’ The boy came up to me, stepping fully into the light of the torch, and I beheld the face of Pietro, the missing son of the murdered chef, Brunello of Borgia, and his wife.

I had wondered where Pietro had gone after his parents’ suspicious deaths. I had also wondered why. One who flees a death scene, I assumed, did so because he was guilty of the crime. My teacher, I recalled, had offered a different reason for Pietro’s flight: fear.

Now I had one answer: he had come here, to the place where orphans, runaways and other urchins of the street eked out an existence.

I hoped I was about to find out the answer to the second question.

Pietro stood before me.

I recalled meeting him in his father’s kitchens on the night of the opening banquet. I had thought him shy then, quiet. Here, however, in the firelight of Zubaida’s torch in the underground cistern, his features seemed sharper, more alert.

‘I will give you one chance before I leave you to Omar,’ he said with a deferential nod to Omar. ‘What can you tell me of my parents’ deaths?’

All eyes fell on me. I stood my ground and held my head high as I had seen my father do when he wanted to appear particularly regal.

I swallowed. Then I said, ‘My teacher, whom the Sultan himself has consulted about both the cardinal’s and your parents’ deaths, believes that your mother and father did not take their own lives, but were murdered.’

At first Pietro did not move. He just stared at me with unblinking eyes.

Then he said, ‘Thank the Lord. I didn’t think anyone would ever believe me. My father would never commit suicide. Never. I was convinced there had been foul play, but I did not know how to prove it. I fled here because I thought I might also be in danger. Your teacher must be a most clever man.’

‘He is.’ He had also been right about the reason for Pietro’s flight.

Pietro turned to Omar. ‘She has earned their passage.’

Omar didn’t seem exactly pleased about this, but he did nothing to contradict Pietro.

My mind, however, was racing. Mentioning the murder of Brunello and his wife had caused a storm of thoughts to rush through it.

First, my teacher’s theory that someone—the queen or the wrestler Darius or even Brunello himself—had attempted to poison Cardinal Cardoza but had instead accidentally poisoned the visiting Cardinal Farnese.

Mr Ascham had not believed that it had been Brunello. But I recalled my teacher’s discussion with the slave girl Sasha in the slaughter room: she had said that Brunello had argued angrily with Cardinal Cardoza in the kitchens recently.

‘One moment,’ I said as Zubaida backtracked toward the archway through which we had entered the children’s cistern. ‘Before he died, your father argued with Cardinal Cardoza. What did they argue about?’

Pietro said, ‘My father was furious with the cardinal because he would not give my dead brother a Christian burial.’

I had forgotten about Pietro’s younger brother. What was his name? Benicio. About three years younger than Pietro and of diminished mind, the younger boy had killed himself a few weeks before our arrival in Constantinople by slashing his own wrists.

Pietro said, ‘Because my brother had taken his own life, Cardinal Cardoza denied him a Christian burial, thus condemning Benicio to an eternity in Hell. My father was appalled. All his life he had been a good Christian and he had always been obedient to the cardinal, obedient to the point of fawning. He could not believe that the cardinal could be so heartless. But the cardinal would not budge from his stance. Suicide, he said, was a crime against God. Those who took away the greatest gift God had given them, life, were forever to be denied access to the gates of Heaven. That was why they argued.’

I had to tell Mr Ascham. Perhaps, driven by rage at the cardinal’s intransigence, Brunello had indeed tried to poison Cardinal Cardoza. But upon the death of the visiting Cardinal Farnese, the cunning Cardoza had deduced the true target of the poisoning attempt, himself, and had had the chef and his wife killed in a manner that made it appear they had committed suicide.

‘Thank you, Pietro,’ I said. ‘If this matter is resolved and it is safe for you to come out of hiding, I will know where to find you—’

‘
Hey!
’ A sudden shout from the far end of the darkened cistern made us all turn.

I saw torches: three of them, small in the distance but growing larger as they approached.

The children of the cave scattered behind columns and into their mounds of debris and garbage. Zubaida and I also ducked behind the archway through which we had been heading and peered back round it to observe what happened next.

Omar alone waited to meet the three men who appeared out of the darkness, holding torches aloft.

They were priests.

Young priests whom I had seen in Cardinal Cardoza’s rooms the night before last.

‘Greetings, young man,’ the first priest said in Greek. ‘Peace be with you. How are you this fine evening?’ The priest said this in a bright voice that belied the somewhat foreboding surroundings.

‘Speak plainly, priest,’ Omar said.

‘Right, well,’ the priest said. ‘We bring you food’—at this, one of the other young priests held open a cloth on which sat a freshly cooked shank of beef and a collection of baked potatoes—‘in exchange for your presence at a gathering we are holding tonight.’

Omar’s eyes were glued to the shank.

I saw the other children’s heads appear from their hiding holes, drawn by the delicious smell of the hot food.

‘How many?’ Omar said.

‘Three boys, one girl,’ the priest said as if he were at a market stall.

Omar turned and spoke gruffly to the darkness in Turkish.

‘What is he saying?’ I whispered to Zubaida.

‘Omar just said, “Whose turn is it this time?”’ Zubaida said.

At length, four children stepped out from the shadows—three boys and a girl—and the lead priest reached out a hand to guide them but Omar barked, ‘No! We eat the food first. Then you get what you desire. That’s how it works.’

The food was handed over and to my surprise, Omar gave the first bites to the four children who had stepped forward. Once they had eaten from the proffered delicacies, they went off with the three priests, and only then did Omar and the others—Pietro among them—partake of the remaining food, eating hungrily.

I felt a profound sadness as I watched this. So this was where the trade in human bodies began, with food for the starving given in exchange for favours for the depraved.

Zubaida and I scurried away and after some hurried searching, found our way back to the entrance in the rose garden. Once back on the surface, we went our separate ways toward our respective rooms, glad to return to the world we knew, the world of sun and air and light, a world that for all its wickedness was still safer and more palatable than the one we had just witnessed.

AFTER BIDDING ZUBAIDA FAREWELL, I hurried back to my lodgings. I wanted to tell Mr Ascham about my new theory.

Arriving at the hallway leading to our quarters, however, I slowed my pace and trod with more caution—while Elsie was clearly very accustomed to sneaking back into her bed without waking anyone, I was not, and I did not want to disturb anybody in the neighbouring rooms and betray my night-time adventuring.

But then as the door to our quarters came into view, it opened suddenly and I threw myself back behind some curtains.

Fast footsteps came down the hallway and, risking a peek, I spied my teacher—clad in his oilskin overcoat and hat—striding purposefully down the corridor. He walked quickly past my hiding place, too preoccupied with wherever he was going to notice me.

Where was he going—alone—in the middle of the night?

The answer, of course, was obvious. Only something to do with the investigation could draw him out of doors so late.

Although all I really wanted to do at that time was crawl into my bed and go to sleep, I worried for him. Already five people connected with our investigation had met unnatural and suspicious ends—Cardinal Farnese, the chef and his wife, Maximilian of Vienna and the virgin ‘gift’, Helena—and I did not want my teacher, venturing out alone, to be the sixth.

And so, despite my weariness, I followed him.