Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome (3 page)

‘That’s a merry tune for you to play,’ Di Brachio said, curling his lip. ‘I hear that Genoa—’

‘I don’t serve Genoa,’ the knight said. ‘I serve God. That said – what I hear – from my friends,’ said the knight, ‘is that both of you serve Cardinal Bessarion.’

Swan looked at Di Brachio, who let his lashes drop over his eyes.

‘The Greek mimes say it openly,’ the knight added quietly. ‘I’m afraid they are so delighted to be out of the city that they talk too much.’

Di Brachio’s expression grew pained. ‘It is possible I have some passing acquaintance with His Eminence,’ he admitted.

‘This city needs a patron,’ the knight said. ‘We cannot hold it. I have three knights and twenty brother sergeants and as many mercenaries – and we are all supposed to work the hospital. The new rumour that I hear is that the two Paleolog brothers have had a disagreement – about resistance to the Grand Turk. The local gentlemen and their
stradiotes
might number sixty good fighting men. We need a professional garrison. We need twenty thousand ducats’ worth of repairs to the walls and we need these things immediately.’ He paused. ‘If I get you a letter from the leaders of this city, can you see to it that it goes to the right recipients in Rome?’

Di Brachio’s face registered something between a frown and a sneer. ‘A knight of the powerful order of St John can certainly get a letter to Rome.’ He looked at the ring on the knight’s finger. ‘A man who wears a ring like that can find twenty thousand ducats.’

The knight wrinkled his lips. ‘We need help
now.
If you can get that help from the Signori, even better.’ The knight leaned forward.

Di Brachio leaned forward too. ‘Perhaps if you had not been quite so busy using this port as a haven to prey on Venetian shipping …’ He shrugged. ‘Listen, messire – are you proposing to sell this town from under the Despot?’

The two men stared at each other. Neither budged – they were nose to nose.

Swan cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps I could broach the matter with the cardinal,’ he said.

Both men turned to look at him.

Swan smiled. ‘My wound hurts. Perhaps I might rest?’

Di Brachio’s look promised him the torments of hell, but Swan rarely cared about long-term consequence. He lay down and rolled over, facing the wall.

Di Brachio leaned over him and whispered ‘You bastard’ in his ear.

Darkness fell, and Swan was awake, plotting. He had the outline of a plan, and wondered to himself what a city – a city with its own international wine trade, perhaps a little past its prime – was worth. In ducats.

There was movement at the end of the ward.

Swan grew very still.

Something pale and graceful was coming down the ward – moving with a sort of effortless inhumanity, like—

The hackles stood up on Swan’s neck for a moment, and then he smelled attar of roses and a little healthy human sweat. He took his hand off the ear-dagger under his bolster, and lay back.

‘I gather I have to do all the work,’ she said. She sounded young, and pretty – and the truth was, he wasn’t ever going to know. It was very dark, and all he saw was the gleam of her naked back in a ray of moonlight as she pulled the shift over her head.

She didn’t linger, and she expected to be paid, and nonetheless, he felt much better. Perhaps because everything worked. Perhaps—

He made her laugh, and he kissed her before she took his silver and left.

On balance, he decided she was beautiful.

They sailed for Venice two days later, leaving a half-score of men in the beds of the infirmary, but not Swan. Ser Marco ordered them to sea as soon as he caught the rumour of a powerful Turkish squadron up the coast towards Hermione. Fra Domenico seconded his efforts to get to sea.

A deputation of the towns merchants and nobles visited Ser Marco with a set of scrolls for the Pope and for the Doge of Venice.

Swan had his own scroll, from the town’s ruler. It was brought to him by a Greek priest whom he had seen on the wards as he recovered. The man gave him the letter with a bag of Venetian ducats.

‘You are English?’ he asked.

Swan smiled. ‘Yes, Pater,’ he answered, in Greek.

‘My grandmother remembered when there were Englishmen here. And an English church. But that was long ago.’ He nodded. ‘Men say you search for old scrolls and books, Englishman.’

Swan nodded and sat up a little more. ‘It’s true,’ he said.

‘There’s not much here,’ said the priest. ‘Too many Italians have rifled our libraries. But – have you visited any of the islands? Lesvos? Chios? They might have good libraries.’ He fingered his beads. ‘I went to school on Lesvos. I could write a letter to my abbot. If you will give me your promise to try and make your Latin Pope accept this town. And arm it.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I would anyway,’ he said, with uncharacteristic candour.

Fra Domenica brought him wine. ‘I gather Father Giorgios was here,’ he said. ‘Some say he is a spy for the Paleologi. Others say other things.’

Swan was unable to take his eyes off the knight’s ring ‘Is that … Roman?’ he asked.

Fra Domenico smiled. ‘Greek. They say. I had it off Khaireddin, the corsair. He claimed it belonged to Alexander the Great.’ The knight held it out – then changed his mind and took it off his finger. Swan held it in his palm. ‘Quartz?’ he asked.

‘Diamond,’ said the knight.

‘By the virgin, messire, this ring is worth—’

The knight shrugged. ‘A few thousand ducats, perhaps. I will turn it into money when I must.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’m told that the cardinal loves such baubles.’

Swan looked away. ‘He loves the ancient world,’ he said. ‘I think he’d be more taken with a lost book about Alexander than the conqueror’s ring.’ He tried to hide his acquisitiveness and said, ‘But he loves a fine present …’

The knight nodded. ‘It has hermetical powers,’ he said. ‘Listen, young man. I’m a man of the sea and a man of God, and I’m not a man of this town. Eh?’

‘It’s not worth the ring, to you,’ Swan said.

The knight laughed. ‘I feel as if I’m talking to a theologian.’ He shrugged. ‘But no. It is a sin, no doubt, but I love the ring.’

Swan weighed it in his hand, considering how he might steal it. Then he handed it back. ‘A magnificent thing,’ he said. ‘Thanks for letting me feel it.’

‘You saved the head of St George from the infidel!’ Fra Domenico said. ‘I would do a few favours for you.’

Swan went down to the lower ward and divided the ducats with Peter, who was showing every sign of recovering despite arrow wounds that still leaked.

Peter counted the coins and nodded. ‘I’d like to say if had vorse voundz,’ he said. ‘But I haf not. Almost a hundred ducats, master. Two days’ pay.’ He smiled.

The fiction that he made fifty ducats a day had once infuriated Swan, but now he took it in his stride. ‘I’m only three hundred days in arrears, now,’ he said.

‘Pah, you haf come round to my way of tinkink at last.’ Peter grinned. ‘I am not likink that you leaf me here.’

Swan smiled. ‘I’m fairly sure I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Equally sure this town can use a master archer.’

Peter’s grin vanished. ‘You vill safe my wages by leafing me to die in the siege?’

Swan nodded. ‘That’s my plan, yes.’

‘Best come back and get me, or I vill haunt you, yess?’ Peter’s wound made his accent harsher. He had lost weight and his cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut butter. His long mouth was pale – almost grey.

Swan embraced him and got his kit aboard the galley in time to watch the oarsmen come aboard. They were beyond dissipated – most of them had spent their advance on pay, and a few had sold their arms. One remarkable man seemed to have no clothes at all except his rain shirt of tar-daubed linen, which he wore with the regal dignity of a man who was very, very drunk.

Once again, Swan had to remark on the many similarities between Englishmen and Venetians.

Di Brachio came and leant on the rail of the command deck next to him. ‘So, Messire Swan – where is the head of St George?’

Swan all but jumped out of his skin.

Di Brachio laughed aloud. ‘I have it. Or rather, Master Nikephorus has it, although there was almost an incident – the town’s fathers did not want to let it go, and we had to convince them that if it stayed here, we would not look favourably on their letter to Venice and the Pope.’ Di Brachio turned, set his back against the rail, and stretched like a long-limbed cat. ‘So how much did they bribe you to carry the letter?’

‘Three hundred ducats,’ Swan said.

Di Brachio whistled between his teeth. ‘Why you? Why not me?’

Swan grunted as he moved his weight off the rail – his stomach muscles were weak – and reached into the leather sack which the knights had given him to carry his laundered clothes. ‘Here’s yours,’ he said. ‘I split with Peter.’

Di Brachio weighed the small purse in his hand. Then he dropped it into the front of his doublet. ‘You really are an honourable thief, Master Swan.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m not well enough connected to do them their favour without you. But won’t Venice take this place back like a shot?’

Ser Marco came up the ladder to the command deck like a much younger man. The oarsmen were still coming aboard in a noisy mob – offering not a hint of the disciplined machine they could become. But Ser Marco had clearly heard part of the exchange.

‘It depends,’ he said. He and Di Brachio exchanged a glance. ‘They should, but it may not be in any faction’s interest to take this city and garrison it. Since the fashion for malmsey wine changed, and the sugar trade moved, this city isn’t as important as it once was. A year-round garrison and twenty thousand in wall repair? Venice is a business, Messire Swan, not an empire.’ He shrugged.

Di Brachio nodded. ‘And – if I may, Ser Marco – it depends on the relations between the Serenissima and the Despots. There are two Greek rulers here, Master Swan – Demetrios, who favours alliance with the Turks, and Thomas, who seems to be willing to fight. They mirror two factions in Venice, eh?’

‘And in Genoa, I’ll wager,’ said Swan. ‘No wonder the Turks push us around.’

They sailed up the Adriatic without incident, pausing to take water or eat a meal in Ragusa and the other Venetian possessions on the Dalmatian coast. They crossed the sea to drop the bishop and his retinue, including the now much esteemed Master Claudio and Swan’s friend, the notary turned man-at-arms, Cesare de Brescia, at Ancona on the east coast of Italy proper. But two weeks later, they raised the lagoon, and the sailors and unengaged oarsmen danced on the catwalk above the rowers’ deck and all the men gave three sharp cheers.

Ser Marco leaned on the rails, whistling through the gap in his front teeth. ‘I will miss them,’ he said. ‘This is one of the best crews I have ever had – three fights, and they are made. The lubbers who joined us are right sailormen, and the good men are better yet.’ He grinned. ‘If I had ever been tempted to turn pirate, it would be now – with a ship as good as this one, and this crew, I could make a fortune.’

Di Brachio bowed. ‘Messire, you
have
a fortune.’

‘And this is no doubt why I return my ship to the arsenal and my beautiful crew to the stews and brothels. But it is a waste, and the next
capitano
will not be able to get just the same crew in just the same ship.’ He shrugged. ‘Listen – Di Brachio – you are a good man. Why not give up your little ways and settle down? You could command a galley. I have written you a very strong commendation to the Ten.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Why don’t you just call yourself Bembo? Your father accepts you – in public. He has no other son.’

Di Brachio shrugged. ‘The Ten do not love me,’ he said. ‘My father, bless his soul of iron, is still undecided.’

Ser Marco spat. ‘When it comes to killing men in Outremer, you’ll find that the Ten care very much less about your personal habits,’ he said. ‘Marry a girl and make some heirs, and you can do as you please. Surely your father has said all this to you.’

Di Brachio shrugged again. ‘I am not yet ready for this surrender,’ he said. ‘I am like a citadel that, having survived a nasty siege, is not anxious to join the new peace. And what of the poor girl?’

Ser Marco looked offended. ‘What of her? Girls are girls. They know the game.’

Di Brachio shook his head. ‘Messire, you are the finest commander under whom I have shipped, but on this, we do not agree.’

Ser Marco embraced him. ‘Well, you are a fine soldier, and I’m sure we don’t like other things, too.’

Later, after the ship had docked right against the quay in St Mark’s Square and Ser Marco had returned his banner to the church and ordered the rowers to begin the last leg of the journey round to the arsenal, he also embraced Swan.

‘Try and keep Master Di Brachio alive,’ he said. ‘He might grow to be a great man – and a great Venetian.’ The knight shrugged. ‘If he survives long enough. You are a good man, Master Swan. I believe I owe you my life, and I remain at your service.’

Di Brachio went ashore to see his father, and Swan stood alone on the dock, his spirits oppressed. Many of the
arsenali
had pressed him to come and drink, but he knew that as a ‘gentleman’ he would only slow them. The archers were men he liked – he’d played dice and piquet with them, and the Spaniard, now much recovered, was a well-lettered man whose friendship he was happy to have.

But the archers had left the ship in St Mark’s Square, and were probably already drunk. The other men-at-arms were Venetian gentlemen, and their families had met them at the arsenal.

He saw the unloading of the wicker baskets carrying his armour, and the second basket with all the scrolls that he and Peter had rescued. Then he arranged a boat for all the mimes, and, aided by Giannis, still recovering, and Irene, he got them and their various treasures aboard and rowed across to the western part of the city.

The old whore was still on duty at the end of the warehouses. He waved, and she grinned, and he felt a fool, but the familiar sights were cheering and he had an odd feeling of isolation, as if he was wrapped in a carpet. Giannis and Irene kissed and cosseted each other at every turn, and Nikephorus was sunk in a study, and Swan missed Di Brachio and missed Peter.