The Tournament Read online

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO CATE PATERSON, JANE NOVAK AND TRACEY CHEETHAM

  MATTHEW

  REILLY

  THE

  TOURNAMENT

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  1603

  Prologue: 1603

  1546

  I. ROOK

  England, September 1546

  The Journey, October 1546

  The Habsburg Lands

  Into Wallachia

  The Ottoman Capital

  II. PAWN

  Into Byzantium

  The Palace of the Sultan

  The City of Constantine

  The Sultan

  The Opening Banquet

  The Players

  III. BISHOP

  The Hours After the Banquet

  Movements in the Night

  The Pool and the Dungeon

  After Dark in the Sultan’s Palace

  The Tournament Begins

  The Tournament Draw

  The First Match

  Two More Victims

  The Cardinal and the Whoremonger

  Another Night at the Palace

  A Discussion Among Titans

  The Embassy

  IV. QUEEN

  A Most Unusual Morning

  The Sultan’s Incredible Menagerie

  The Death of a Player

  The Second Round Begins

  The Sultan

  The Queen

  The Sultan’s Man Struggles

  Mr Giles Versus Dragan

  The World Beneath

  The Inhabitants of the Underworld

  Movement in the Night

  The Wolves of Topkapi Palace

  Elsie and the Crown Prince

  V. KNIGHT

  The Semi Finals

  Pietro

  The Cardinal’s Man

  Into the Cardinal’s Den

  The Battle with the Fiend

  The Last Night in Constantinople

  VI. KING

  The Last Day

  Epilogue: 1603

  Postscript

  Selected Sources

  An Interview with Matthew Reilly about the Tournament

  About the Author

  Also By Matthew Reilly

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The following is a work of fiction. While it contains characters and organisations that existed, their actions are the product of the author’s imagination.

  This novel also contains subject matter of an adult nature. The author recommends that it be read by mature readers.

  It has long been accepted that the first international chess tournament was the event staged in London in 1851 and won by Adolf Anderssen of Germany. Sixteen men from all over Europe competed to determine the best player in the world. (Prior to that occasion, individual players would play in celebrated one-off matches.)

  But a rumour persists in the chess world of a tournament that was held long before the London one, an event that took place in the 16th century in the ancient city of Constantinople, now Istanbul.

  Sadly, no records of this event remain and until some kind of documentary proof of its staging arises, it is destined to remain the stuff of legend.

  From: A History of Chess,

  Boris Ivanov (Advantage Press, London, 1972)

  1603

  PROLOGUE

  1603

  MY QUEEN IS DEAD. MY FRIEND IS DEAD. The world is not the same. It is darker now.

  How she carried herself so well in this chaotic world, I shall never know. In a life lived in a maelstrom of courtiers, bishops and commanders, she always got her way. This she achieved oftentimes through charm, many times through shrewdness, and on rare occasions through the more direct method of executing those who opposed her.

  She always knew when people were watching. I have no doubt that when she sent some poor wretch to the Tower, it was as much for the spectacle of it as it was for the crime. Sometimes rulers must set grim examples.

  It has been said by many that her extraordinary nimbleness of mind was the result of her education at the hands of the great schoolmaster Roger Ascham. Having personally witnessed some of that education, I can attest that her schooling was of the highest order.

  As the child of one of her household’s staff and being of a similar age, I was the young princess’s principal playmate. Later in life, I would assume the role of chief attendant to her bedchamber, but as a girl, by sheer virtue of proximity, I was allowed to partake in her lessons and thus received a level of instruction that I otherwise would never have known.

  By the time Elizabeth was seven, she was fluent in French, capable at Spanish and could speak and read Latin and Greek. When William Grindal—supervised by the great Ascham—took over her education in 1544, she had added Italian and German to that list. While Grindal managed her day-to-day lessons, it was Ascham who always loomed in the background, the grand architect of her overall schooling. He stepped in when major subjects were taught: languages, mathematics, and history, both ancient and recent. A vocal advocate of the benefits of regular outdoor activity, he even taught her archery in the grounds of Hatfield.

  He also, it must be said, taught the young princess Elizabeth chess.

  I can still see her as a thirteen-year-old, bent over the board, the wild curls of her carrot-coloured hair framing an elfin freckled face, her eyes fixed in a deadly stare at the pieces, trying to deduce the best available move, while across from her, Ascham, utterly careless of the state of the game, watched her think.

  As a child Bess lost more games than she won and some in the royal house at Hatfield thought it scandalous that Ascham should continually beat the daughter of the king, often crushingly.

  On more than one occasion Bess would fall into my arms in tears after a game. ‘Oh, Gwinny, Gwinny! He beat me again!’

  ‘He is a cruel monster,’ I would say soothingly.

  ‘He is, isn’t he?’ But then she would regather herself. ‘I shall beat him one day. I most certainly will.’ And, of course, eventually she did.

  For his part, the great teacher made no apologies for his brutal manner of play, not even when Bess’s governess wrote a letter to the king complaining about it.

  When pressed by an emissary of the king about the matter, Ascham argued that unless one loses, one does not learn. His job, he said, was to ensure that the little princess learned. The king accepted this argument and the beatings at chess were allowed to continue. As an adult, Elizabeth would rarely lose at the game and on the far more dangerous chessboard of her life—at court in London and on the high seas against the House of Castile—she never lost.

  Chess, Ascham claimed, taught many important lessons: to flatter one’s opponent, to lay traps and to see them laid, to be bold and to restrain one’s tendency to boldness, to appear naïve when in truth one is alert, to see the future many moves ahead and to discover that decisions always have consequences.

  Ascham taught my young mistress well.

  But now, to my great shock, I have just learned that Ascham’s best lesson might have occurred not in our little schoolroom in Hertfordshire but far from England.

  For last week, as her health faded and she lay confined to her bed, my mistress called me to her side and then ordered all the other attendants to leave the chamber.

  ‘Gwinny,’ she said. ‘My dearest, dearest Gwinny. As the light dims and the end draws near, there is something I wish to tell you. It is a tale that I have kept to myself for nigh on sixty years.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Call me Bess, like you used to, when we were children.’

  ‘But, of course. Please go on . . . Bes
s . . .’ I had not called her that for half a century.

  Her eyes opened but they stared at nothing. ‘Many have wondered at the life I have led, Gwinny: a queen who never married or bore heirs; a woman with no military training who fended off Philip’s armadas; a Protestant ruler who continually executed Ignatius of Loyola’s Catholic missionaries and who on more than one occasion rebuffed proposals of marriage from the Russian tsar, Ivan.

  ‘How I came to be such a woman—sexless and aloof with men, wary of courtiers and ambassadors, ruthless when dealing with enemies—was the result of many things, but above all of them rises one experience, one singular experience from my youth, a journey that I took in absolute secrecy. It was an event that I have not dared tell anyone about for fear that they would think me a fabulist. It is this experience that I wish to impart to you now.’

  For the next two days, my queen spoke and I listened.

  She recounted to me an event early in her life when, during the autumn of 1546 at a time when Hertfordshire was gripped by a sudden bout of plague, Roger Ascham took her away from Hatfield House for a period of three months.

  I remembered the time vividly and for several reasons.

  First, the plague of 1546 was a particularly vicious one. Escaping outbursts of the dreaded disease was common for royal children—removing a young heir from the locale of an illness was the best way to avoid a severing of the royal line—and that year many of the residents of Hertfordshire fled the district very promptly.

  Second, it was a particularly dangerous time for Elizabeth. Although the passage of the Succession to the Crown Act of 1543 had seen her returned to the line of succession, in 1546, at the age of thirteen, she was still third in line behind her younger half-brother, Edward, then nine, and her older half-sister, Mary, then thirty. Yet Elizabeth’s mere existence still posed a threat to both of their claims and she faced the very real possibility of being taken away in the dead of night and meeting a bloody end in the Tower—an end that could be conveniently blamed on the plague.

  The third and last reason perhaps reflects more on me than on my mistress. I remember that particular time well because when she went away to the east, Elizabeth chose not to take me with her.

  Instead she took another young member of our household, a spritely older girl named Elsie Fitzgerald who was, I admit, far prettier and more worldly than I was.

  I wept for days after they left. And I spent that autumn miserably alone at the home of relatives in Sussex, safe from the plague but missing the company of my friend.

  When my mistress finished her tale, I was speechless with horror and shock.

  In the years following that missing autumn of 1546, she had always maintained that her trip away had been an uneventful one, just another excursion to the Continent with Ascham. Although they had ostensibly gone east to see some chess tournament, upon her return Elizabeth had never talked about chess or any such championship, and her friendship with Elsie was never the same again.

  After hearing her account of that time, I now know why.

  Her trip had not been uneventful at all.

  Ascham had not just taken her far to the east—beyond the borders of Christendom, into the very heart of the lands of the Moslems, the great city of Constantinople—he had also exposed the future queen to many dreadful perils as they became privileged witnesses to the most remarkable event never recorded in history.

  When she finished telling me her tale, my queen lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes. ‘Long have I wondered if I should tell anyone of those days, but now all of the other participants are dead and soon I will be, too. If it pleases you, Gwinny, write down my words, so that others might know how a queen like me is formed.’

  And so I make this my task, my final task on her behalf, to commit to writing her exact words and recount to you, dear reader, the marvellous things—the terrible things, the terrifying things—she beheld over the course of that secret journey in 1546.

  1546

  ROOK

  IN MODERN CHESS, the rooks are presented as castles anchoring the four corners of the board, but it was not always this way.

  In fact, the name ‘rook’ derives from ruhk, the Persian word for chariot. Pawns were footsoldiers, bishops were elephants, knights were mounted cavalry, and speeding along at the edges of the board were the swift and deadly chariots.

  But as times changed and the game spread from Persia to Europe, chess pieces began to reflect the social hierarchy of medieval Western Europe. Thus the chariot became a castle. It was still a powerful piece, able to race down the board in a single move and control entire ranks, but the original reason for its fleetness of foot was lost.

  Still, in its own way, the rook-as-castle remains an excellent example of chess pieces reflecting medieval society, for many a king of those times was judged by the strength and grandeur of the castles he kept.

  From: Chess in the Middle Ages,

  Tel Jackson (W.M. Lawry & Co., London, 1992)

  I thank God that I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat, I were able to live in any place in Christendom.

  – QUEEN ELIZABETH I

  ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 1546

  I WAS LIVING AT Hatfield House in Hertfordshire when the invitation arrived at court in London. It was delivered to Hatfield a day later, accompanied by a typically curt message from my father to Mr Ascham.

  Truly, it was a wondrous thing.

  It was printed on the most exquisite paper, crisp card with gold on its edges. Written on it in shining gold ink (and in English) was the following:

  HIS EXALTED MAJESTY

  SULEIMAN THE MAGNIFICENT,

  CALIPH OF THE SONS

  AND DAUGHTERS OF ALLAH,

  SULTAN OF THE LANDS OF THE OTTOMANS,

  LORD OF THE REALMS OF THE RomanS,

  THE PERSIANS AND THE ARABS,

  HERO OF ALL THAT IS,

  PRIDE OF THE GLORIFIED KAABA

  AND ILLUMINED MEDINA, THE NOBLE

  JERUSALEM AND THE THRONE OF EGYPT,

  LORD AND RULER OF ALL THAT HE SURVEYS,

  BIDS YOU MOST WARM GREETING.

  AS ESTEEMED KING OF ENGALAND,

  YOU ARE INVITED TO SEND

  YOUR FINEST PLAYER

  OF THE GAME KNOWN AS SHATRANJ,

  LUDOS SCACORUM, ESCHECS, SCHACHSPIEL,

  SCACCHI, SZACHY OR CHESS,

  TO COMPETE IN A TOURNAMENT

  TO DETERMINE THE CHAMPION

  OF THE KNOWN WORLD.

  I snorted. ‘For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can’t even spell England properly.’

  Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. ‘Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?’

  ‘You know that I do not.’

  ‘Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted.’

  I frowned at my teacher, but it was impossible to hate him even when he chastised me so. He had a way about him. In the way he carried himself, in the way he spoke, in the way he chastised me: gentle but firm.

  Mr Roger Ascham was thirty-one then, and in those days—long before he wrote The Schoolmaster, the work for which he became rightly famous after his death—he was already one of Cambridge’s most celebrated instructors in classical Greek and Latin.

  And yet, if I could have wished anything more for him, it would have been that he were more handsome. He was of average build and average height and in a world of rich young colts with broad shoulders, hard features and the imperiousness of inherited wealth, this made him seem small, soft, harmless. He had a big round nose, hangdog brown eyes and oversized ears that he kept covered with a mop of thick brown hair. I o
nce overheard someone say that at a society ball, not a single one of the young ladies accepted his polite invitations to dance. I cried for him when I heard that. If those silly ladies only knew what they were missing.

  But while I shed tears for him over it, he didn’t seem to mind. He was more interested in the art of learning and he pursued that passion with a ferocious intensity. In fact, he displayed a deep intensity of concentration in almost everything he did, whether it was practising his beloved archery, debating matters of state, reading a book or teaching me. To learn, as far as Roger Ascham was concerned, was the noblest of all endeavours and it was an active one.

  He was, quite simply, the most curious man I had ever met.

  Mr Ascham knew all manner of strange arcana, from theories about the ancient stone circles on the Salisbury Plain to the latest scientific methods in medicine and mathematics. And what he didn’t know, he sought to find out. Whether it was the visiting Astronomer Royal, the king’s surgeon or a travelling tinker selling a miracle cure, Mr Ascham would always probe them with pointed questions: asking the Astronomer Royal if Amerigo Vespucci’s claims about using the moon and Mars to determine longitude were valid, asking my father’s surgeon why certain plants caused certain kinds of rashes, or asking the tinker if he was aware that he was a quack.

  Such was Mr Ascham’s knowledge of so broad a range of subjects, it was not unknown during his time at Cambridge for professors in other disciplines to come to his rooms to confer with him on areas of their own supposed expertise.

  For in a world where people claimed to find higher wisdom from God or the Bible, my dear tutor prayed at the twin altars of knowledge and logic. ‘Everything,’ he once told me, ‘happens for a logical reason, from the downward flow of streams to illnesses to the actions of men. We just have to find that reason. The acquisition of knowledge, the sheer pleasure of finding things out, is the greatest gift in life.’

  On one well-known occasion, after a local boy prone to foamy-mouthed fits died suddenly and the local abbot attributed the event to the boy’s possession by Satan, Mr Ascham asked to see the lad’s brain. Yes, his brain! The dead boy’s skull was cracked open and, sure enough, Mr Ascham found a white foreign body the size of an apple lodged in his brain. Mr Ascham later told me in reference to that event, ‘Before we blame the supernatural, Bess, we should exhaust all the natural explanations first.’ The abbot didn’t speak to him for a year after that. Not everyone shared Mr Ascham’s pleasure for finding things out.