Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome (8 page)

Giannis gave him a look. The Frenchman raised both hands. ‘Share and share alike!’ he said with Gallish sincerity. ‘I swear! Brothers for ever! Or until we have to fight!’

The Florentines watched the process with distaste. ‘What becomes of them, then?’ Accuicciulli asked Di Brescia.

The Roman sneered. ‘Nothing good, but it won’t be at our hands. One dead – the rest are merely down, and this coward here’ – Di Brescia had his foot on one man’s gut – ‘is merely shamming, waiting for us to leave.’

‘Do we hold the battlefield, or must we flee from their reinforcements?’ asked the Florentine. ‘I don’t know your Roman ways.’

The innkeeper, of all people, had taken a heavy blow early in the fight, and sat by the upturned table, with his wife fussing over a new egg on his scalp. She looked up. ‘We don’t want any more trouble,’ she said. ‘My poor man – look at him!’

‘The watch won’t come,’ Di Brescia said. ‘If these were hard times, like a papal election, then both sides would send for more men and we’d have a battle. But in these decadent times …’ The older man shrugged. ‘Swan, you attract trouble like shit attracts flies, you know that, eh?’

In the end, they all went back to the cardinal’s palazzo, moving carefully. Swan’s split lip, along with the bruise to his head, had swelled outrageously, making any kind of talking difficult, and his right eye was almost swollen shut. Violetta had sewn Irene’s hand, and the Greek acrobat stood the pain during the sewing, and got honey from the innkeeper’s wife to spread on the wound. Di Brescia and Giannis were virtually untouched. They embraced the Florentine with promises of future comradery and all of them wrapped themselves in cloaks and followed Giannis, who had volunteered to scout, out into the darkness.

Swan realised that the Frenchman was with them.

‘Where are you going?’ he whispered. They were crossing the edge of the forum.

‘I need work,’ the man muttered. ‘My boss got the plague. You’re rich – hire me. I can fight.’

Swan could barely talk, much less negotiate. ‘I’ll give you a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘That is the limit of my resources.’

Bessarion had two stables, one for visitors and one for his own nags and some donkeys. Swan put the Frenchman in with the mules, and fetched him two good blankets from his own travelling gear.

Violetta stood in the shadows. ‘I can’t go to your room,’ she said.

Swan was in pain. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

Di Brescia shook his head. ‘You won’t be caught,’ he said. ‘It’s as important to the cardinal’s reputation as to ours. Come on.’ He took them in through the kitchen, and the only servant awake was a small boy nodding by the great fireplace.

They climbed the back stairs, up two flights, and crept along the barracks corridors to their rooms. Swan reached his with a sigh of relief, pulled the courtesan in behind him and shut the door. He kissed her in the darkness despite the pain.

She put a hand behind his head. ‘You taste like blood,’ she said. She sounded happy.

Later, in the darkness, she pushed him away. ‘Would you marry me?’ she asked.

Swan couldn’t see her. He grunted, thinking the proposition over.

‘The fucking priests aren’t going to marry me, are they?’ she asked the darkness. ‘My mother said that you needed to find a soldier and stay with him. She did it for ten years, until the gentleman took a lance in the side down in Naples. He was good to us. I remember riding his horse.’ She wriggled. ‘You think I’m used goods. Can I tell you something whores know that virgins don’t?’

‘My mother was a whore,’ Swan said. His whole face hurt. His side hurt. But this was … interesting.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It just doesn’t matter. Unless you let it matter. I could be a good wife. Did you just say your mother was a whore?’

‘She runs a tavern in London. Like that woman tonight, except there is no landlord. Just her brothers, who are a pair of …’ He couldn’t think of words to do justice to his uncles. ‘Bruisers. Thugs. Killers. But they were always good to me.’

They lay in silence.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’m not – exactly – the marrying type.’

She laughed. ‘Well, neither am I. But I decided I’d ask you, as you are the only man I know that I like. Well – I like Giannis, now. Di Brescia – he wanted to peel my clothes off even while he teaches me to hold a sword.’

Swan licked the inside of the big bruise on his cheek. ‘So did I,’ he said.

‘You’re not a hundred years old,’ she said. ‘Your body’s as good as mine.’

Later, he said, ‘Damn it, maybe I
should
marry you.’

Swan was summoned by the cardinal, and was left in no doubt of his failings. It was early, but he was already shaved, dressed and ready.

Swan looked at his empty bed, considered his past and future, and made his decision. He picked up the bag of his treasures – the small items he’d purchased on his own account in Greece – and took them with him to the cardinal.

Bessarion sat across his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘You threatened my steward, you created a riot in the forum where my name was mentioned, and you brought a notorious courtesan into my house. And no doubt fornicated with her.’ He sounded weary. ‘You look like an animal,’ he added.

Swan was past anger. He’d been awakened early by Violetta – after almost no sleep – and his face was as big as a melon. His right eye was barely able to open and he looked like a puffy-faced Turk. She had dressed quickly, with almost no talk, and she hadn’t kissed him.

He’d taken her out through the kitchen, of course. Except that the kitchen at dawn is a much busier place than the kitchen at the dark of the moon.

‘I feel that you are out of place in my household,’ Bessarion said.

Swan thought furiously – much as he’d thought when Violetta proposed marriage. It wasn’t what you said – it was how you said it. Adults had been shouting at him for his various misdemeanours for most of his life. Reacting to the injustice of the situation was almost never the best tactic. He controlled his breathing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

‘No, you are not,’ Bessarion said. He raised his eyes, and they had a little sparkle to them. ‘She is quite remarkably beautiful,’ he said. He almost sounded wistful. ‘Listen, boy. I owe you a great deal. But this is an awful time for the Curia. The loss of Constantinople …’ He shrugged. ‘For me, it is liking losing my right hand. But even for the Latin curates, it is as if God has turned his back on us.’ He looked off into space beyond Swan’s head. ‘Perhaps he has, and this is the end of the Church. Di Brachio says that the Turk plans to conquer Italy.’

Swan met his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He thinks he is Alexander born again.’

Bessarion smiled. ‘What a heretical notion for an Islamic man to hold,’ he said. ‘I wonder how I can use it against him?’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Listen, boy. There is a galley at Ancona that is readying for sea – bound for Cos and Rhodos. You need to leave this town, and I am flush with money – I can afford to send you to buy books.’ He leaned back. ‘Mind you, I suspect that you, too, are flush with money. Mm?’

‘I made some money in Constantinople, Eminence,’ Swan replied.

‘The missing stones on the head, perhaps? Never mind. I’m giving the head to the Serenissima in return for their support for a crusade. They can replace the stones.’ Bessarion leaned forward. ‘I was thinking of other money.’

‘Father Ridolpho’s gold?’ Swan asked sweetly. ‘In French francs and Genoese gold mixed? Is that what we’re looking for?’

Bessarion nodded. ‘So you admit it?’ he began loudly, and then paused. ‘French francs? That’s odd.’

‘I thought so, too,’ Swan said. He put the bag on the table – most of the bag. ‘I confess I spent some of it, but I promise it was in a good cause.’

Bessarion sorted through the coins. ‘Sweet Saviour, but the French debase their coins.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Eminence, I freely confess to you that I’d have spent more of them if anyone would take them.’

Bessarion sat back again. ‘Englishman, you are incorrigible. You confess to stealing from my steward.’

Swan smiled. ‘Eminence, he insulted Messire Di Brachio, accused the two of you of sodomy, and is obviously being paid to spy on you.’ Swan waved his hand in dismissal – a gesture he’d learned from his father, closing the subject as unimportant. ‘May I hire another soldier? I have a Frenchman below who saved my life last night.’

‘That falls in with my wishes very well, my boy, as I cannot send Giannis with you – I need him with my Greeks. And Di Brachio is better, but he will not be sailing this week or next. Hire this Frenchman by all means.’ He was unrolling a scroll as he talked – a Greek play. ‘You saved some wonderful things. Go and save more.’

‘What of Monemvasia?’ Swan asked.

‘If I am Pope …’ Bessarion made a very Greek motion with his head – neither yea nor nay. ‘I would take the city for the Holy See. But others do not feel as I do, and Genoa and Venice are putting fingers into the pie. I will make sure that your galley touches there – you’ll want your man back.’

‘But the other men are Venetians …’ Swan rubbed his chin.

‘Leave them,’ Bessarion said. ‘Unless you can make the lion lie down with the lamb.’ He waited for Swan to understand and gave up with a shake of his head. ‘At any rate …’

Understanding hit Swan – a heraldic joke. The Lion of St Mark and Venice, the lamb of the Order of St John – and Genoa. He laughed as people do when they are late to a joke.

Bessarion winced. ‘Listen, my young thief,’ he said. ‘I need you to be able to reach certain people and act in certain ways. You have good manners and your Italian is virtually flawless.’

‘Your Eminence should try my Arabic or my Turkish!’ Swan bragged.

Bessarion smiled the smile of the older man recognising something he didn’t like in himself. ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I’m sending you on a galley of the Order of Rhodos. You know them?’

Swan nodded. ‘The Knights of St John? They put on all the best plays in London. My mother says they are good to the poor.’ He smiled. ‘There were two of them at Madame Lucrescia’s a few nights ago.’

Bessarion nodded. ‘Yes – I imagine some of them are men like other men. I am arranging for you to be accepted as a Donat – a volunteer – with the order. This will allow you to serve on their galleys. Our Pope has just signed a bull stating that service on the order’s galleys will win remission of your sins.’

Swan nodded. ‘That’s … good,’ he said slowly.

Bessarion laughed out loud. He threw his head back and roared, and for a moment, with his long beard and bushy white eyebrows, he looked like the Silenus Satyr that Swan had seen in Florence. He laughed for several ticks of his enormous German clock.

‘My boy, there are few men in Christendom who need remission of their sins more than you do, and few with less interest. In a way, you are the perfect exemplar of – of …’ Bessarion shook his head.

‘Foolishness?’ Swan ventured.

‘Youth!’ Bessarion said. ‘Here’s a note for the prior – he’s the senior officer of the order in Rome. He’ll take your oath. Thomas, do me an enormous favour, and do not dishonour your oath to the order. For me.’

Swan put his hand on his heart. ‘I will be a faithful … er, Donat. Is that like being a knight?’

‘Very like,’ Bessarion said. ‘Men pay vast sums of money for the rank.’

Suddenly Swan was pleased. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I’ll do it as well as I can,’ he added earnestly. Suddenly, under his youthful show of indifference, he was afire.
The Order of St John!

Bessarion handed him two scrolls. ‘These are your patents of nobility, and this is the Pope’s grant to you. The prior will want both of them. By Saint George, Thomas, I only wish I was going to be there to see you with the knights.’ He waved his hand. ‘Be off with you.’

Swan smiled winningly. ‘Eminence, you say I saved some good things. I brought other things back.’ He opened his sack and began to place objects on the cardinal’s desk.

Bessarion began looking at them impatiently, and muttered something about appointments. But the coin with Alexander’s head and ram’s horns arrested him – another with Medusa made him laugh aloud. The small seals with intricate scenes carved on them – one homoerotic and one heteroerotic – both made him laugh. The spearhead he put aside, and then held out the butt spike.

‘I suspect your military education is better than mine,’ he said.

Swan shook his head. ‘I don’t know the Greek word,’ he admitted. ‘But I think it went on the base of the spear.’

‘Beautiful – like a Greek column,’ said Bessarion, weighing it in his hand.

Swan laid out all his treasures. Bessarion nodded over all of them.

‘I will give them as gifts,’ he said. ‘The butt spike for Sforza of Mila, with the spearhead. They express the majesty of Greece. What is lost. And what can be regained. Well done.’

Swan hesitated. ‘I spent money on them,’ he said. ‘I intended … to sell them.’

Bessarion was looking at a small crystal seal with a tiny Eros masterfully carved into the face. ‘Of course you did, my young criminal. Unless you stole them.’

Swan raised his eyes to heaven. ‘I didn’t steal any of them,’ he said.

‘Then they didn’t cost you much,’ Bessarion answered him. ‘But do not think me ungrateful. I’ll get you some gold. Bring me more of this …’ He waved at his table. ‘Great men will put them in their cabinets and display them. We will have some measure of power by having these things.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘In Constantinople, we had so much of this that these would have been like rubbish.’

‘I need a new sword,’ Swan said. ‘And a breastplate that fits me better.’

‘You should spend less on Demoiselle Violetta, then,’ Bessarion said. ‘Go and see Di Brachio. I’ll find you some money.’ He got up. ‘I will look at Father Ridolpho’s activities. But stealing from another member of this household will not happen again. No matter how much you dislike him. And you will only enjoy sinning with your friend outside my house. Those are my rules. Are they clear in your mind?’

Swan bowed his head. ‘Yes, Eminence.’

Bessarion opened his five-page wax tablet set and tapped his stylus against his forehead in mock consternation. ‘Now it is I who play the fool – I have not told you your mission.’