The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible Read Online Free

home by May Day were already receding. The world was so rich, so wide …
    ‘You got an estate to run,’ said Hodge. ‘The lambing, spring crops to sort. And abroad’s a bloody awful place anyhow. I know, I’ve been there. Full of people who want to rob you or kill you or both.’
    Nicholas gazed into the middle distance. ‘Something with the taste of far-off adventure …’
    ‘Don’t you dare. I don’t have a sense of adventure.’
    ‘It’ll come back to you,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘I’m not going up to Hull again and that coast,’ said the mariner. ‘Grim old coast, that is.’
    ‘Not Hull,’ said Nicholas. ‘Possibly further. Possibly Constantinople.’
    The mariner laughed. ‘Go and visit the Turk? Now who’s the teller of tall tales?’
    Hodge gripped Nicholas’s shoulder. ‘What else have those devious knights been telling you?’
    Nicholas looked evasive. Then he said in a low, serious tone, ‘They admitted to me when we were on the road that the Order has intercepted a message from the heart of the Sublime Porte itself. One of their trusted agents came back to Malta with a letter in fearsome code, but marked from the Sultan’s own secretariat. The agent said that two men had already been murdered for possession of the letter, and he only narrowly escaped with his own life. After poring over it many days, the Knights understood it to read, The Black Sea is flooding north, through summer meadows .’
    ‘Very pretty. What the devil does that mean?’
    ‘They’re not sure. But if two men died for it, it must matter.’
    ‘Tell me what they think it means.’ Hodge was exasperated. ‘For the love of God, Nick, have I ever betrayed you?’
    Of course he had not. For all that they were still officially master and man, they were two equals in every other respect. ‘It may mean,’ he said quietly, ‘that the Ottoman Empire is about to march north and attack Russia. To wipe it off the map.’
     
     

 
     
     
     
    4
     
    On the third day a messenger came to them with commandment to attend the First Secretary himself at Greenwich in the instant. Lord Cecil.
    ‘Mother Mary,’ muttered Nicholas, ‘what did they make of my account of Malta and Lepanto? This is like going to see the headmaster back at grammar school.’
    They waited for hours, were given more wine than they wanted, were moved from chamber into grander and grander chamber, listened to the stately ticking of a fine Italian wall-clock and sighed away most of the afternoon. At last, after it had struck six, they were summoned before William Cecil himself. The most powerful man in the kingdom, perhaps, after the Archbishop of Canterbury.
    A small man, hunched, beady-eyed, pallid. Her Majesty was supposed to call him ‘My little elf’. And a brain as elfin and cunning, nimble and far-seeing as any in Christendom. If a ruler’s first duty was to choose his counsellors wisely, then Elizabeth had certainly fulfilled it.
    He greeted them abruptly, voice thin and sharp, and asked where they were staying.
    ‘The Mermaid, at Wapping.’
    ‘Wapping?’ said Cecil with distaste. ‘That’s where we hang ­pirates.’
    ‘Just nearby,’ said Hodge. ‘Can smell ’em hangin’ there in an east wind, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Cecil looked at him sourly. Hodge had already taken a strong dislike to the First Secretary, for keeping them waiting three hours or more, so he pressed on, just to annoy him, ‘And the doxy upstairs is only sixpence for half an hour, he says she’s his daughter but I shouldn’t wonder if she isn’t just the same age as he is!’
    Cecil winced. ‘You are …?’
    ‘Master Matthew Hodgkin of the County of Shropshire, Gentleman, and Queen’s Pension of Five Pounds for Life for services at the Great and Gallant Battle of Lepanto against the Wicked Turk.’
    Cecil eyed him with eyes as cold as a fish on a marble slab. ‘Fascinating. But would you mind waiting outside? It’s Ingoldsby here I must talk with.’
    Hodge