The Religion by Tim Willocks

knew they'd never complete. That morning she'd felt as free as the wind in her hair. Carla walked back to the guesthouse. She'd go to the villa's chapel and say her rosary and praythat the girl succeeded. If Amparo returned from the Oracle alone, their quest would be over.
    Tuesday, May 15, 1565
    The Oracle Tavern-Messina-Sicily

    Harsh white light and the sewage-tainted stench of the harbor spilled through the warehouse doors across a mongrel horde of nations and men, its members drawn from the criminal and military classes, and among them a sense of excitement was general. Pickers, sailors, smugglers, soldiers,
bravi
, painters, and thieves crowded the rough-hewn trestles and poured their wages down their gullets with the gusto of the long and justly damned. Their talk, as always, was of the imminent invasion of Malta and of the cruel and degenerate Turks and the perversions of Islam. Their ignorance of all these topics might well have bordered on perfection, but as long as they kept drinking, Tannhauser had no reason to complain. He intended to profit from the war no matter who was victorious, so he kept his own peace, as is a wise man's practice, and invested his attention in his customary late breakfast: today an exceedingly tasty blood sausage from the Benedictines of Maniacio, washed down with a raw red wine brewed by the same.
    His shoulders filled a massive walnut chair, upholstered in shabby green leather and embellished in gold leaf with the legend "
Usque ad finem
." It was known as "Tannhauser's Throne" and a brisk thrashing, followed by violent ejection into the reeking gutter without, awaited any sot drunk enough to imagine he might rest there. He had only lately come to be a man of business and property, and that against all previous expectations, but he felt that his new vocation fitted him well and, as in every endeavor in which he engaged, he gave himself up to it body and soul.
    The tavern had evolved, as if of its own accord, from the anteroom of the warehouse from which Tannhauser plied his trade as a dealer in arms. The table at which he ate stood in an alcove among the gantried casks to the rear and from whence he could observe the whole room. This alcove was draped in carpets of exotic origin and fabulous design, which lent his office the air of a caravanserai. On the table was a broken clock fromPrague, whose innards he intended to repair with components of his own manufacture, and beside it a brass astrolabe, by which one could calculate the position of celestial bodies, and which Professor Maurolico in person had taught him how to use; and heaped around these instruments were tomes of curious provenance, written in a variety of languages-not all of which, admittedly, Tannhauser could understand-and from certain of which, when in his cups, he would declaim
ghazals
in Turkish and laments by Fuzuli and Baki. His library also included Brucioli's banned translation of the New Testament-a feat for which the man had died in the Inquisition's jails-and tractates by Ramon Llull and Trithemius of Sponheim, and books of Natural Magick, wherein were expounded the opinions of ancient philosophers and the causes of Wondrous Effects. Amid these quaint paraphernalia, with his densely thewed forearms and their heathen tattoos, and his scarred countenance and bronze hair and lapis lazuli eyes, Tannhauser seemed to his fellows like a Mogul from some remote and outlandish demesne, and this was to his liking, for in mystery lay the notion of power, and in power lay his own notion of freedom.
    As Tannhauser finished the sausage and drained his wine, Dana sashayed over to take his plate. She was supple and full and all abloom with youth. Along with the three other women who served the tables, Dana was from Belgrade. The four had been saved from a corsairs' brothel in Algiers when their ship was captured by the galleys of the Religion. Tannhauser, in his turn, had saved the girls from the brothels of Messina, though not