Free The Religion by Tim Willocks

was his idea and the drivers cracked their whips and the oxen strained in the traces and with the riders in the lead the wagon train began its procession through the harbor.
    If Sicily as a whole was uncongenial to those of nonconformist temper, Messina, which through millennia had known conquerors by the dozen, was open to foreigners, rogues, and entrepreneurs of every stripe. It was an independent republic, as populous as Rome, and paid the latest-Spanish-invaders presently stripping the island to the bone as little mind as it had paid the Romans, the Arabs, the Normans, and all the rest. It was turbulent and rich, and with the sanctuary of Calabria only two miles across the straits, it harbored the lawless high and low in enormous numbers. The governor looted more for the Spanish Crown in a single year than the rest of the island yielded up in five. On the Church's part, the Holy Inquisition formed a veritable legion of kidnappers, killers, and thieves, and numbered in its ranks knights, barons, merchants, artisans, criminals of every kind, and, it went without saying, the bulk of the civil police force. As a place for a man such as Tannhauser to make his fortune, it had no equal.
    The bay of Messina formed a perfect sickle-shaped harbor, protected by fortified jetties and the cannon of the monumental arsenal that commanded the sea. Behind it stood the old walled city itself, the outlines of its towers and campanili warping in the noontide heat. The vast docks were forested with masts and spars and reefed sails, and through the sparkling light that bounced up from the water, barges stacked with baskets and bales plied the strand. Apart from a sprinkle of fishing boats and coasters, and a Spanish galleass patrolling out in the offing, the sea beyond was still, for most mariners were waiting out these dangerous days until the Grande Turke's intentions were better known.
    The Wharf of the Knights Hospitaller was half a league distant fromthe Oracle and on their way Tannhauser and his entourage clattered over the cobbles past chandlers and ropewalks, spice magazines and granaries, bordellos and money changers and drinking dens similar to their own. They rode past towering cargo cranes powered by slaves inside the rims of giant treadle wheels, and past careened galleys stretched out amid the smell of oakum and pitch; past food vendors roasting tripes and gambrels festooned with the carcasses of fresh-skinned lambs; past street cleaners shoveling excrement into reeking fly-blown carts; past limbless beggars and barefoot urchins and mendicants pleading for alms; past women arguing prices with stall holders; past bands of swaggering
bravi
with their sneers and hidden knives; past a thousand cursing voices and a thousand breaking backs. The colossal scale of the enterprise, which abounded for as far as his eye could see, reminded Tannhauser that Sabato Svi was right: they were not yet rich enough. He resolved to pay his respects to Dimitrianos on the way home and secure some decent rations for the voyage.
    The
Couronne
was long and sleek, a hundred and eighty feet from stem to stern and only twenty feet in the beam. It was designed, like all the knights' ships, for speed and attack. The hull was painted black and the huge lateen sails were bloodred. The gold eight-pointed cross woven thereon dazzled the eye. On the wharf to welcome the ship in their long black mantles stood a score or so knights of the Religion. All wore swords over their robes and looked ready for any hazard. Tannhauser assumed they'd arrived in recent days from the most distant priories of the Order and indeed the features of some were distinctly German or Scandinavian, and of others likely Spanish or Portuguese. They were taking it in turns to embrace a slender brother who stood amongst them. When the man turned this way to greet the next, Tannhauser recognized Oliver Starkey. Their eyes met and Tannhauser saluted and smiled. Unease flickered over Starkey's