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Overview
Carlo Fantom spoke thirteen languages—a skill that proved useful as he traveled widely to sell his brutal services to any party who would pay him. This novel, written in the form of his personal memoirs, takes readers on a journey to his younger days—from the Croatian farm where he was born and raised to Venice, where he sails to collect a ransom for hostages—and offers both an intriguing look at how his character was formed and an action-packed account of his earliest adventures.
“Reginald Hill’s stories must certainly be among the best now being written.” —The Times Literary Supplement
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504059732 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
| Publication date: | 12/17/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 234 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
I'm not sure how old I was when I left home. Fifteen perhaps, add a year, take a year. Croatian farmers don't keep count. There, a son's age is measured by how much he can lift without spilling, how far he can carry it without stopping, how long he can keep on lifting and carrying without collapsing. By these standards I was well on the way to being a man. But my outward semblance was still that of a fresh-faced innocent country lad and, when I left home, none who saw me could easily have forecast the life of bloodshed and fornication that lay ahead.
True, I had already bedded a girl, but it was only my sister. And I had already killed a man, but it was only my confessor. Scarcely achievements to boast about across a tavern table or around a campfire! Years later I confided my early sense of inadequacy to old Lauder, that most philosophical of mercenaries and most mercenary of philosophers.
He agreed with my assessment, saying, 'Aye, they should teach each chiel at his mammie's knee that in matters o' sex and slaughter, sisters and priests don't count.'
Then he added, sucking at a foul-smelling meerschaum whose Dutch owner's head lay not twenty feet away, 'But take guid heed, Fantom! God is not mocked. In matters o' theology, they may count double!'
Well, let them count what they will. Who numbers the daffodils in an April mead, or the flies on the corpse that lies there?
Not that my sister and the priest haven't been on my conscience, but I cannot believe that God will punish equally the sin we do from choice and that which necessity drives us to. And I have ever been driven by circumstances beyond my control.
In my sister's case it was proximity. Ours was a remote farmhouse, a long and weary way from an almost equally remote village with no certain reward at the end of your journey. It was too small for a brothel and the local peasants kept as tight a rein on their growing daughters as my father did on his.
But he was a bad keep-master, concentrating all his watch on the enemy without and never fearing any enemy within. It was as if a farmer should store his parsnips in the duck pond to keep them out of the rain! Someone should have told the silly bugger.
Eventually someone did.
Perturbed in spirit, I'd sought relief in confession and did my penance most religiously. But the poxy priest, deciding in his arrogance that God was not capable of looking after his own sinners, dropped a large hint to my father.
Does a priest who breaks the seal of the confessional deserve to live?
I left that up to God and when I'd recovered from my beating, I went to confession again and slipped my blade through the curtain and let God make his choice. He chose the left lung.
Young and innocent though I was, I had wit enough to realize that priest-killing was not going to be tolerated by the authorities. Croatia at that time was under the signory of Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, as shit-breeches a Catholic as ever the Habsburgs produced; but south, from Bosnia on, was overlorded by the Turks and it is surely worth an extra millennium of torment to that prattling priest that I was driven by my youthful fear to seek refuge among the heathen.
And worse! For so extreme did my need rapidly become that, seeing how Christians were but slightly regarded in these lands, having fewer rights and receiving smaller pay than their Turkish rulers and colonists, I bowed to circumstance once more and became a Mussulman. At first I did no more than half the Bosnian populace who, putting salvation of their money before salvation of their souls, embraced the Muslim faith with every appearance of sincerity. Some of these converts pretended in private that they did it for their families' sakes, claiming that thus they avoided the devshirme. This was a kind of tax system under which, instead of money, children were taken from among the Christians, converted to Islam, and trained to be janizaries or administrators. I could see little harm in this and I even thought of offering myself as a volunteer. It seemed a brave thing to stride around with the fierce expression and the long curved sword of a janizary! But God (or Allah) did not want me at that time. He was saving me up for later.
The thing was, I had discovered that I had a gift of tongues. I had always been able to pick up very quickly the scraps of foreign languages I heard from the few strangers to come near our village, and the priest (God grind his rotten soul) had marvelled at the way I had learned Latin simply by attendance at divine service. But now, moving around in the more cosmopolitan society of the Bosnian littoral, I discovered that with little effort I could make myself understood in almost any tongue after listening for an hour or so; and if I applied myself, I could have it like a native in a couple of days. I was dark-haired, swarthy-skinned, of only middling stature; nothing in my appearance distinguished me from the Turk except my clothes. So I asked myself, why pass for a mere convert (which is always a suspicious thing) when by a change of clothes you could pass for the thing itself?
Beppo I called myself and soon I was taken into the service of Mustafa Aziz, a spice trader who was only too pleased to employ a genuine Muslim rather than having to rely on a Christian or a convert. He was in Bosnia with his son, Hassan, a fine, strapping lad, rather older than I, who was learning the ins-and-outs of his father's business. I relieved him of all the more menial tasks of fetching and carrying and soon we had become good friends, better really than I wished. Your Mussulman is a fine fellow, brave in war, steadfast in honour, yet often he has a strange habit of bestowing more love on a fellow man than a Christian soul can easily bear. As long as a man gets sons on his wives, they think it no shame if he keeps his affection for his men-friends. And Hassan sometimes regarded me with a look which boded more than mere amity.
I used to watch him at exercise of arms, for this was his great joy. I think he would have been a soldier had not obedience to the father's will been such a strong tenet of their faith. But at hurling the jerreed from a racing pony he had no equal, and his oiled muscles rippled and shone as he went through the drill sequence of scimitar passes which ends with an attempt to sever a thick, twisted fold of felt at a single blow. He used to laugh at my own efforts, then bask in my admiration as he demonstrated once more how it was done. And my admiration was genuine, but it was bestowed on the feat of arms, not (as I misdoubt me he believed) on the rippling muscles.
Mustafa himself was a grand old villain with a noble, almost Roman, face, a greying beard, and a mien and gait of venerable dignity which made his sharp thrusts in business deals all the more effective. Yet it was not just a surface. He always treated me with great courtesy and generosity and, if Hassan's appetites had been more straightforward and we had gone chasing girls together, I think I would have been happy to continue and prosper in Mustafa's service for ever (or as much of 'for ever' as a young man understands!). But God moves in mysterious ways to keep His children from harm, and He does not hesitate to use one of their lesser failings to keep them from a greater. So it was that my youthful lust began to put me in mind of my Christian duties when the Pope's own sermon might have failed.
God having put the idea in my mind, He now nudged Mustafa in the right direction, which was towards a Christian country, for to revert to my own persona in Bosnia would leave me no better off than before.
In the port of Zara, the old Turk encountered a Venetian merchant, Marcantonio Priuli, with whom he had some acquaintance. Priuli's ship had sprung a leak and was being repaired, and the extra expense involved plus the fact that he had missed his convoy (necessary protection against the many pirates who scoured the Adriatic) must have contributed to his perpetually worried expression and his thatch of greying hair. Mustafa saw a chance to profit, bought a share in the Venetian's cargo and announced that we would all go with the ship to Venice where he purposed to set up an agency with Hassan in charge.
Venice was almost the only city in Christendom where a Turk could hope to do this, I discovered later. But then I knew nothing of Venetian society and was surprised when I learnt from the crew that Papa Priuli, as they disrespectfully called him, was a member of one of their largest and noblest families. Later I realized that Venice is full of such large and noble families, so noble that they need vast wealth to reflect their status, and so large that there just isn't enough of it to go round. Peripheral relations like Papa Priuli were forced to earn a living somehow; usually the choice was between the Church and the navy, dry or wet buggery as old Lauder once put it. Papa Priuli had decided instead to try to revive the trading fortunes of his cadet branch of the family which foreign competition, dishonest agents and the ravages of pirates had brought (and continued to hold) down.
At least these were the things Papa Priuli blamed. I think he was just unlucky. Some men are, as if God, tired of eternal retirement, were seeking another Job to make a come-back! I have known many such and take care to be far from them when the enemy attacks. Others are such favourites of fortune that nothing may touch them. These too I avoid. When the grape-shot fills the air I want all around me to receive their full portion.
Me, I am neither lucky or unlucky, this I have come to understand. I have received nothing I have not earned. Or, to put it another way I have deserved everything I ever got.
But the day we boarded Papa Priuli's ship to sail for Venice I thought I was lucky. I said a little prayer of thanks and promised to remove this heathen turban and these robes as soon as I set foot safely on Christian soil. It seemed a fair offer, one God would hardly refuse. But in the way of a bargain He is sharper even than old Mustafa, and in all His contracts He Himself fills in the time and place.
This too have I learned.
CHAPTER 2We sailed out of Zara on a fine wintry morning with a boisterous sou'-easterly blowing right up the Adriatic as though puffed by St Mark himself to take Venetians home. Any other man would have seized on it gladly and headed for the open sea and the straightest route. Not Marcantonio Priuli. He immediately resolved to take advantage of the favourable conditions to call in at Pola in Istria and see if he could fill his empty storage space with a cargo of salt. This meant steering a course through the string of small islands, which runs parallel to the coast from Istria to Dalmatia, not difficult under the direction of an expert in fine conditions, but no easy task when (as it did now) the wind veers to the west and the owner starts pulling rank on the captain.
At first my fears were simply that we might run aground on one of the islands or, worse (for me), be forced to seek shelter in the nearest mainland port, which was Senj in my homeland of Croatia. That I should be recognized and arrested so far from my inland home was most unlikely, but I was young and fearful enough to imagine I was a very notorious outlaw! So when the wind shifted again, swinging completely round so that it was coming right off the land, I was delighted and thought the others would be also.
This would take us right out to sea, away from the twin menace of the law and these rocky islets.
But none of the sailors shared my relief and when I heard them utter the word bora, I began to realize why. This was the Croatian name for the fearful nor'-easterly wind which blows out of Russia each winter. I had experienced it in my inland home and that was bad enough, but nothing compared to its force when, funnelled through the Vratnik Pass, it comes screaming out of the Velebit Mountains and explodes across the sea.
If the sou'-easterly which had wafted us early that morning was St Mark's breath, this bora was a blast straight from the devil's arsehole!
For now it was on us.
It took us like a cork and drove us across the white surges at such a rate that we seemed to spend as much time in the air as on the water. Anything loose was washed overboard, including a couple of sailors, and Papa Priuli clinging to a mast hard by me had a face distorted with grief, though whether at the loss of his tackle or his crew I could not say. The helmsman held to his tiller most manfully and kept the ship beam on to the blast till a tangle of rigging descended on him and bowled him over. The tiller whipped round, the ship turned broadside on to the gale, the helmsman arose bloody but still lusting for life and flung himself back on to the flailing tiller. He must have got half a dozen cracked ribs for his efforts, but he got no more, for he now cried out in pain and despair, 'Mary Mother of God preserve us! The bloody thing's knackered!' It's interesting to speculate how much the force of his oaths diluted the force of his prayer. But I wasn't in the mood for philosophy at the time.
'Look! Look!' I was screaming at Papa Priuli. 'We are saved! We are saved!'
And I pointed to where, through the mist of foam, moved a long galley with a practised ease which made our own progress through the waters seem even more perilous than it was. Even as I watched, the galley drew closer and closer, the rowers on the nearer side shipping their oars and pushing bales of linen on short lines over the bulwarks so that they acted as fenders when the two vessels met. Immediately other men leapt from the galley to our deck, bearing ropes and irons with which they grappled the vessels together and then used the steerage on the galley to turn both into the teeth of the wind.
It was a masterly piece of seamanship and one which merited heartfelt thanks both to God and our rescuers. But the fact of my companions still showed nothing but despair. And beside me Priuli uttered a word even more fearful than bora. Uskoks!
These Uskoks were the most feared gang of sea-brigands in the Adriatic. Though some of them claimed to be servants of Christ in His war against the ungodly and even had priests fee'd to bless their expeditions (and share their booty!), yet they showed little religious discrimination in their pillaging. Indeed since the Serene Republic had made its peace with the Ottomans, these Uskoks were as ferocious towards Venetian merchants as they were to the Turks.
But the peril I had been saved from was still hot in my mind and that which I approached had not yet begun to burn, so all I felt as the galley drew us into the lea of a small island was a mighty relief. I watched with grateful admiration the manner in which the Uskok captain, a tall blond man with a huge tangle of reddish beard, managed his ship. His lieutenants called him Godislav and obeyed his sharp, precise orders instantly. I was well satisfied to have fallen into the hands of such a saviour.
Not until the ship was safely hove to in a sheltered cove did Captain Godislav pay the slightest attention to Papa Priuli and his crew who, to tell the truth, behaved as if hobgoblins had boarded their craft, not pirates. Not a weapon was drawn. None of them showed even the courage of despair, but scuttled into dark corners like wood-lice whom the peasant's matlock has exposed to the bright sun. Only Mustafa Aziz stood unchanged and defiant before these newcomers, and I felt at the same time proud of him and ashamed that it was a heathen who was showing Christians how to behave. But here if anywhere, I believed in my childish innocence, was the example to follow. I drew myself up alongside Hassan and together we emulated his father's pose.
This seemed the right move, for the blond Godislav, taking his ease now against the ship's mast, smiled on us as if in approval then addressed himself to Mustafa.
'Old man,' he said courteously. 'This is your lucky day. Will you take this chance to embrace the true faith, kiss our Saviour's cross, and die like a Christian in the happy surety of God's grace and the life to come?' 'There is one God, Allah is his name and Mohammed is his Prophet,' intoned Mustafa magnificently.
'Is it so?' said Godislav. 'None the less, I shall baptize you. Repentance may come beyond human hearing, and I should hate you to be unprepared for it. Pastor Jaraj, will you take this child to the font?'
Grinning broadly, there stepped forward a huge fellow who had seemed to be Godislav's chief lieutenant in the attack. As black as his captain was fair, he must have weighed another five stone, and he seized Mustafa like a sack of wool, hauled him to the edge of the deck and bound a length of rope round his legs.
I begun to feel distinctly uneasy. This was the oddest looking pastor I had ever seen.
Now Black Jaraj measured the rope carefully before tying the other end to a stanchion.
'Tell me, old man,' said Godislav. 'By what name would you like to be received into the bosom of Holy Mother Church? How about John?'
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Forging of Fantom"
by .
Copyright © 1979 Estate of Reginald Hill.
Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
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