Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 2

by Christian Cameron

Swan looked up.

  ‘The duchess is not a fool,’ the confessor said. ‘And she is a great supporter of the crusade, and other worthy projects.’

  Swan nodded. He had a headache.

  No one spoke to him again. Farther down the table, Kendal was surrounded in the same circle of silence.

  After dinner, the boards were taken away with the same skill and speed. Musicians appeared and the duke took his lady’s hand and they danced. The duchess, despite her ungainly looks, danced very well, and moving together, they looked far less incongruous.

  Swan watched Violetta dance with two other women, and suddenly the duke was at his side, unannounced.

  ‘Let’s to business,’ he said, and turned away. Swan followed him to a balcony, where two clerks sat with a writing desk. The air was fragrant and pleasant, and night was just falling; the last of summer twilight hung in the air like a brilliant smoke.

  ‘Please accept some advice from me,’ the duke said. ‘Try not to speak to your superiors in public. You don’t know how.’

  Swan swallowed anger.

  ‘See? You don’t even think they are your superiors.’ Sforza laughed. ‘If I needed a captain, I’d hire you. I assume you are a firebrand. Arrogance is the very hallmark of a good captain.’ His smile vanished. ‘But at my table, it’s just rude to claim you want to leave. You make mockery of my hospitality.’

  Swan’s eyes grew wide.

  ‘You have offended me,’ Sforza said.

  ‘I apologise.’ Swan knelt. ‘My lord duke … your Grace …’

  ‘Very well. Apology accepted. Now, on to other matters,’ the duke said. He didn’t even glance at Swan, who, in turn, felt humiliated. And in addition to his humiliation there was the knowledge that this was exactly as Sforza intended. ‘My brother. Tell me what you think. Be quick.’

  ‘I think he was poisoned,’ Swan said, his throat tight.

  ‘As do I. I would rather this was not discussed. My brother is very dear to me. Whoever seeks his death … is a great fool, killing a saintly man. Or has missed killing me. We were together at dinner last week, four nights in a row, while we worked on plans for the Annunciato. The hospital.’

  Swan’s head was full of plots. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Sforza smiled. ‘It’s good to hear you say that. At dinner, you rather gave the impression that you knew everything.’

  Swan grimaced.

  ‘The Peace. The Peace of Lodi. It benefits almost everyone, but not the hungry ones, the angry ones, or the little ones. Too many hands might want to smash it.’ Sforza sipped wine that a silent servant handed him. ‘Now, my brother’s concern. He raised a fair sum for your crusade. This letter from His Holiness. I read it. The Holy Father demands the money. My brother …’ Sforza looked at Swan, and the keen eyes were not kind. They were heavy, poignant and direct. ‘He is not a man like you or me, Suane. He is like a saint. If he says a thing will be done, it is done. How do you know the Demoiselle Violetta?’

  ‘I was able to do her a service in Rome,’ Swan said. He hoped he said it neatly and evenly. Sforza was a much better interrogator than Di Medici, but then he’d done the Medici a favour, and he’d only annoyed Sforza.

  Sforza looked at Swan. ‘Really?’ he said.

  Swan nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Really, your Grace.’

  ‘I see.’ Sforza sipped wine without offering Swan any. ‘Where do you think that money is, Suane?’

  Swan shook his head. He’d seen a mountebank at a fair, once, balancing atop a beanpole. He’d wobbled and wobbled, trying to stay upright, and Swan felt like that. As if he couldn’t move without falling. And he still didn’t really understand what the game was.

  ‘My lord, I do not know. I only know that when I reach Hunyadi with no funds for the crusade … it will be over. There will be no more war.’ He thought of Spinelli’s assertions.

  Perhaps for the best.

  Sforza motioned to the clerks and a parchment was handed to him. ‘You had an interview with Cosimo di Medici on your way here,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me what it was about?’

  ‘No, my lord,’ Swan said, mouth dry.

  ‘He is my closest ally. I might even call him a “friend”. What did you discuss?’

  Swan shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ he said.

  Sforza took a parchment from the clerk. ‘Discretion is a useful skill,’ he said. ‘So is modesty. You would make an excellent lord. I’m not sure you will survive to reach that rank. Here is a draft for five thousand ducats. On me, personally. For Hunyadi.’ He shrugged. ‘It is all my wife and I can do.’

  Swan bowed deeply. ‘I will tell the Ban, your Grace. He admires you.’

  ‘Tell him I admire him, as well. Tell him I wish I was free, and rich, to join him in the field with a thousand Italian lances.’ Sforza frowned. ‘What was it really like, Suane? At Belgrade?’

  Swan looked back into the darkness that was Belgrade. ‘I paid a ducat in gold for a bath,’ he said with a shrug. Then, without intending it, he said, ‘It was like hell come to earth.’

  Sforza nodded. ‘It often is,’ he allowed, and slipped past Swan to return to his people.

  Swan went back in and was almost instantly accosted by Kendal, who wore a look of something like fear.

  ‘I need to get out of here,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk to anyone and I feel like an animal in a menagerie.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m going to punch one of ’em.’

  ‘A little wine and you’ll feel better,’ Swan told Kendal. Easier said than done.

  Swan had not brought his own glass. It was a very different set of customs in Italy; in England, even in the highest classes, people still often carried their own cups and their own eating utensils. In Italy, the latter was still common – less so in the south – but most hosts provided glasses. But Swan had yet to see a wine glass. He watched the servants pouring wine, and shook his head.

  ‘You were supposed to keep your glass from dinner,’ Violetta said. ‘I seem to remember you as a good dancer. Would you care to show the Milanese how to dance? Perhaps something that will annoy them more? A Gelosia perhaps?’

  Swan looked past her. Venticroce was talking to a much shorter man with a pointed beard and ludicrous shoes. He pointed at Swan, caught his eye, and smiled.

  Congratulations on a new enemy.

  Swan couldn’t be bothered, just then. ‘I remember dancing the Gelosia in a certain house in Rome,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you give Messire Kendal your glass, so he can have some wine and stop looking so unhappy, which will eventually affront the Sforza, because we will have insulted their hospitality.’

  Violetta handed Kendal her glass with a curtsy and a beautiful extension of her pale arm, and Kendal took it with more appreciation for the arm than the glass. He turned away to a servant, drank off the whole glass and held it out for another.

  He avoided Swan’s reproving eye.

  ‘He’s very young,’ Violetta said. ‘As young as I was when I went to a certain house in Rome.’

  ‘It’s a curious coincidence that I just paid off your contract,’ Swan said.

  The Duke of Milan bowed to Violetta. ‘We’re just making up our dance,’ he said. ‘Will you …’

  ‘If it is the Gelosia, I will dance with Ser Thomas,’ she said with her smile.

  The Gelosia was a simple dance, which Swan remembered fairly well. Only the first male dancer had to do anything, and of course the duke led the set. He danced with a pretty young woman who proved to be his daughter. Swan was second with Violetta, and behind him was the man in the silly shoes with a woman who giggled constantly and couldn’t have been much more than sixteen.

  The music started; there were two bars of introduction, and everyone in the room was watching because, of course, the duke was dancing. Swan remembered the dance from the first note, and the music, and as the duke circled like a predator and descended to steal the hand of Violetta, Swan stepped forward, apparently uncaring, to sidle up to the duke’s daughter.
She gave him a haughty glance that she probably intended, but Swan reacted with a toss of his own head as if her coquetry inspired his own, and he got a laugh from many of the assembled courtiers. He knelt to her in perfect time and she extended her hand like a peace offering. They swept away into the next section, a sort of promenade of piva steps, like old friends, and then Swan was ready. When the music changed, he left her like an old shoe and circled back to Violetta. She had taught him this dance, jealousy, and when he came to seize her hand she turned her head away in mock disgust, and he circled past her with a little moue of annoyance and pounced on the giggling girl behind her as if she was the love of his life. He knelt and seized her hand.

  She giggled.

  He pretended that her giggles were a challenge to overcome.

  He had people laughing now, and one of them was the duke, whom he displaced. The duke played the game well; he pretended to be uninterested in Violetta, looking back salaciously at the giggling girl, who was now so embarrassed that she threatened to fall to the floor in her distress, which only made her giggle the harder.

  Swan rose to his feet in time to the music and stepped up beside her. He was out of invention, and it was all he could do to keep her in time to the music; she scarcely had control of her body.

  Swan lugged her through the pivas, little bouncing steps that went well with giggles, and the man in the fool’s shoes began his turn. He was a good dancer, and yet lifeless; he woodenly performed the steps, but with no animation, and if Swan hadn’t known better …

  As he turned past Violetta, the man kicked Swan viciously in the shin.

  Swan was taken wholly by surprise, but he had done some combat dancing and he tried to show no discomfort. Only, as the man rounded his former partner and tried to take her hand, Swan delayed leaving his place, hesitated for a quarter of a beat, and pivoted the wrong way. His heel came down on one of the long, pointed toes, and Swan’s elbow was ruthless and left the man on his knees. Swan hopped away as if surprised by these developments, and returned to Violetta’s side, claiming her hand as if she was his long-lost love.

  Pointy-shoes came up behind him. Swan felt him approach and ignored him to kneel at Violetta’s feet in time to the music. The man intended him harm, and telegraphed his punch, and Swan rose to his feet as the music ended and stepped away. He pushed Violetta aside.

  ‘I am Tiberto di Brandolini, and you are a dolt,’ the man said.

  Swan glanced to his left, where the duke was watching. He shrugged and made a motion of dismissal – an arrogant, superior-to-inferior gesture.

  Brandolini boiled over. ‘You coward. You upstart. You gross foreigner.’

  ‘Go away. Come back when you are sober,’ Swan said. He wanted the man angry. Too angry to do anything well. And Brandolini was clearly the worse for wine.

  ‘By God, you English man-whore,’ Brandolini said, and reached for Swan.

  Swan let the man grab his collar. With both hands. Then he spun, immobilised an arm, rotated the elbow, and forced the man to the floor, face down, his arm in a very painful lock. Swan lowered his weight. It was delightfully easy fighting a drunk; the man did all the things that never happened in real fights.

  ‘If you struggle too much, I might shatter your elbow,’ he said softly.

  ‘Suck on … arrggh,’ the Milanese said. ‘Arr … ahhh.’

  Everyone was watching them. Swan smiled. ‘Just playing, friends,’ he said. He released the smaller man, who failed in his sprezzatura and simply lay still for a moment.

  Swan had relented on the elbow.

  A man-at-arms in Sforza colours came and collected Brandolini. No one looked at Swan, who made a reverence to the duke, was not recognised, and made his way to the doors.

  Kendal was standing outside. Laughing. ‘I always think you are so good at everything,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ll be invited back. I liked the way you put Silly Shoes down, though. That was good.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Swan said. He was full of the spirit of combat; his hands were shaking with it.

  Kendal shrugged. ‘As you will, sir.’

  Swan took a deep breath of the air. ‘Not my best night,’ he said.

  They rode in the morning, and no one challenged them. Swan had rather expected some sort of staged encounter, but nothing happened. They got no catcalls at the great gates, and they took the east road on a fine, if chilly, morning.

  ‘I can’t say I’m not happy to see the last of Milan,’ Clemente said. ‘I guess I’m still a Malatesta man at heart. I hate them all.’

  Kendal made a face. ‘I don’t know much about Italy, youngster, but I seem to remember fightin’ for Sforza when we was following Malatesta.’

  ‘He treated my lord very badly in the end,’ Clemente said with a somewhat misplaced loyalty.

  After two hours on the road to Padova they came to an inn. The sausages smelled good and all three were hungry, and they handed their horses to a trio of boys, each as much a scarecrow as the other two. Too late, Swan noted that the courtyard seemed full of bad horses. They were all knocked up, and none of them had been much of a horse to start with. He was just becoming aware …

  ‘’Ware!’ Clemente called.

  Swan drew. He was by one of the horse boys, trying to win a smile from him, having just noted that the boy was terrified. The boy was right in front of him, and his Arab’s head was almost over his right elbow. Swan drew backhanded, as if drawing a dagger, even as he turned.

  Kendal had drawn a dagger, and used it, too. His assailant fell back a step, and Kendal kicked him, turned and drew his short arming sword.

  There were a dozen men in the yard.

  ‘Run,’ Swan said to Clemente.

  Kendal leapt forward. ‘Lovely,’ he shouted. ‘Perfect,’ he said in Italian. ‘Who’s fucking first, eh?’

  Several of the men in the yard cringed.

  Swan was impressed – and a little saddened – by Kendal’s bravado. He’d intended to run himself. Twelve to two was long odds. Insane.

  Kendal rolled a wrist feint. The man closest to him, a blond, bought the feint, or thought he was still in the shouting part and not the killing part, and Kendal rammed the whole length of his short sword into the man’s gut. He folded and fell off the weapon.

  ‘Next?’ Kendal said.

  ‘Fuck,’ Swan said. There was no other word to cover how he felt.

  He emerged from under his horse. The little Arab was beautifully trained and didn’t move at all, despite her master and a great long sword going under her belly.

  Swan cut. He stepped and cut again, neat, simple cuts that used his wrists and not much of his arm strength. He had the serious advantage of surprise and a far better sword, and his second cut went home, deep in his opponent’s bicep. He struck with his pommel and put the man down, snapped the sword around in a flat-cut mezzano and turned his blade to slide it an inch or two straight forward.

  They were bravos, not men-at-arms, or he’d already have been dead. Even as he formed that thought and his blade rotated up from a low guard to a high guard for a deceptive cut, his opponent fled, and the man behind him was already running. One big man, slower or simply not very bright, cut heavily at Swan, who turned it and threw another flat-wrist cut as a deception, but the man missed his parry and Swan let the cut go home, the point of his long sword cutting two fingers into the man’s skull. He screamed as the realisation hit him. He could no doubt see the blade. He fell forward, and the top of his head seemed to come off. Swan stepped aside to avoid the blood. The man was already dead.

  The rest were gone. He could see them running towards the safety of the hillside above the inn.

  Swan let them go. There were five men down. Clemente had all the horses, and a sword in his hand. He had not run.

  Kendal searched the bodies, but they had nothing, not even purses. Their swords were the kind that cities bought in bulk for peasant infantrymen, and two men had had forks – agricultural instruments.

  They had
cut the innkeeper’s throat. His wife was also messily dead. She’d been stabbed in the stomach.

  That angered, and sickened, Swan.

  ‘A little token from the duke?’ Kendal asked. He wasn’t even breathing hard. ‘Damn them.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Swan said. He made himself go into the inn and look around.

  He paused. ‘That was …’ He couldn’t think what word he wanted. Magnificent? Stupid?

  Kendal shrugged. His hands were shaking. ‘I know,’ he said.

  Swan made himself go upstairs, although the kitchen and the keeper’s wife had been bad enough.

  There was a guest in an upstairs room, also dead, a dozen sword cuts on his body. He’d been a pedlar. His pack had been rifled, and the basket broken.

  Swan knelt down, gagged on the dead man’s smell, and shook his head.

  ‘Paid to kill us?’ he asked God. ‘Bandits?’ He spat.

  Kendal was watching the feral shapes of the running men disappearing into the hillside. ‘We could ride them down,’ he said. ‘Kill them all.’

  Swan looked at him, and began to clean the blood off his long sword.

  ‘Or not,’ Kendal said. He shrugged. ‘I see your point.’

  Clemente began to look at the horses. They were still there, loosely tethered. ‘All dog meat,’ he said, disgusted.

  Most of the horses didn’t even have saddles; just pads. But one had a saddle and a leather pack. Clemente unbuckled the pack. There was a leather bag of coins, two dirty shirts, and a heavy wool cloak.

  Swan opened the leather bag and poured the contents into his hand.

  ‘Christ,’ Kendal said. ‘It’s actually thirty pieces of silver.’

  Swan turned over the coins, one at a time. They were Venetian soldi. Every one. Many were newly minted or a year or two old. He took the purse.

  ‘Bury the innkeeper,’ he said. ‘And his wife, and the tinker upstairs.’

  Clemente sighed. ‘Is this why we carry our own shovel?’ he asked, going to the mule.

  Swan entered the Venetian Terra Firma at Verona after a very cautious trip across Lombardy. He had a papal passport and he was a knight of St Mark; they offered him an escort, and he was greeted with courtesy and ceremony, every whit of which he enjoyed to the hilt after his difficulties in Milan. Swan and his companions rode to Padua, heard mass on Sunday, and then took boats downriver to Chioggia and then across the Lido to the city; not the fastest trip, but the safest. Swan had his boatman take him straight to the Ca’ Bembo. He knew the fleet hadn’t sailed, and ten minutes after he entered the Grand Canal, he and Alessandro Bembo embraced on the steps of the riva.