Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 1

by Christian Cameron

  Colonna’s hand shot out and grasped his. It was an old man’s hand, although the man himself was only sixty or so.

  ‘Stay,’ he commanded. ‘I am in a foul mood and I have just heard something very bad. Shall I beg your pardon, Suane?’

  Swan shook his head, knowing that he must appear gracious to a superior. ‘No, Eminence. I take no offence.’

  Colonna nodded. ‘Good. Men like you underpin everything we do, and yet you are hard to offend. I know perfectly well you saved my nephew during the election – you and Bembo Primo, as he is now. When you are my age, you will see why old men bite so hard over nothing. For now, forgive an old man and his fatigue.’

  And I might have killed the priest, just now, Swan thought. He liked old Colonna. He was pleased by the man’s strange, backhanded praise. He bowed.

  ‘Only, Swan, if the Pope sends you to Spinelli, be gentle. Spinelli … he is not the villain.’

  What the hell does that mean? Swan thought.

  The cardinal snapped his fingers and four men picked up the unconscious priest. ‘Let’s be home,’ he muttered, and swept across the room. The Orsini didn’t make trouble, but parted to let the Colonna through.

  Swan went back across the floor to his chimney once again. It was habit; he was curious, and he’d lived without the window breeze all morning.

  Almost everyone in the room heard the shrill invective that curled out of the chimney.

  You killed him? I told you to bring him here, you cretin!

  Swan’s eyes flicked to the room. No one displayed much reaction, and he was the only man close to the source. One of the Orsini bravos had heard the word ‘killed’, Swan could tell. He started, turned, clapped a hand on his non-existent sword.

  Swan was still considering it all when the chamberlain came out and summoned him. He didn’t hear another word.

  Swan had had enough interviews with various popes that the experience had lost some of its lustre, but not all; his hands still shook faintly, and he bowed very low. Callixtus – known before his election as Alfons de Borja – sat on a small throne on a low dais covered in Turkish carpets. Swan had to fight the urge to smile, as the Sultan had also sat on a dais, a much higher dais, covered in better carpets.

  ‘Messire Suane,’ Callixtus murmured, as Swan kissed the papal ring. ‘My one good crusader.’

  ‘Holy Father,’ Swan said quietly.

  The chamberlain handed the Pope a crackling sheaf of parchments, all carrying seals.

  ‘Later,’ the Pope said.

  Jacob paused.

  ‘Just Messire Suane, Jacob,’ the Pope said.

  The chamberlain retired with a polite inclination of his head, and drew the small chamber’s double doors closed behind him.

  The Pope leaned on the arm of his throne, reading something with his eyes shaded by his hand. He looked very old and very angry.

  Then he looked up. ‘This is not going to be the interview either one of us had hoped for,’ he said. ‘I needed you to go back to Hungary. I intended to borrow you from Bessarion, and send you back by way of Milan, and Venice. At your very best speed.’ He pointed to a stack of parchments waiting on a side table. ‘I’m sorry to say, Ser Thomas, that these are my dispatches to England. I had also hoped to send you at least as far as Calais. I need a decent man to tell me what is happening in your homeland; there’s strife, and no money is coming forth.’

  Swan sagged. He had looked forward to a trip to England; especially a trip with a new bride.

  ‘As you will, Holy Father,’ he said. There was, in fact, no other possible answer.

  The Pope met his eye. It was oddly different from meeting the Sultan. The Pope’s eyes burned with intelligence, but he had yet to order anyone killed that Swan knew of. I told you to bring him here. Had that been the Pope? Yelling at Orsini?

  ‘I have a problem, Ser Thomas,’ the Pope said after a pause. ‘You know Spinelli, the banker?’ he asked.

  Swan tried to keep his face expressionless. ‘Yes, Holy Father.’

  ‘He has vanished.’ The Pope made a motion that might have been a shrug, which was mostly smothered in his habit. He was not a big man, and even without ceremonial robes, he all but vanished in the throne. ‘I need you to find Spinelli. Wherever he has gone.’

  Swan frowned. ‘Holy Father, you just told me you were planning to send me to Hungary.’

  The Pope gave a slight shake of the head. ‘Ser Thomas, I am taking you into my service. I believe you have been promised a title and an estate. Is that correct?’

  Swan bowed. ‘My patron, Cardinal Bessarion, mentioned these rewards.’

  Callixtus waved a hand. ‘I, in turn, desire to send you to my fleet. Not because I do not trust the estimable Cardinal Trevisan, but because you are … a professional soldier.’

  Swan was extremely tempted to deny this. In fact, he drew breath.

  ‘No false humility, Swan. The papal Curia is not so packed with soldiers that I can spare one. Tell me, Swan. You are reported to be intelligent. Some men say you are too intelligent. What is the most important weapon of war?’

  Swan thought for a moment. He frowned. ‘Holy Father, I assume that you mean money.’

  Callixtus nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The demands of the crusade and the fleet caused me to borrow a great deal of money from Messire Spinelli.’ He sighed. ‘Now he has fled.’

  Virgin Mary and all the saints, Swan thought. If Spinelli was insolvent, then the Pope himself was bankrupt.

  ‘A small matter of twenty thousand ducats,’ the Pope murmured. ‘I want you to understand. Messire Antonelli of the Medici is covering the immediate bills.’

  Swan breathed again. The Pope was not bankrupt.

  ‘But he will advance no further money. You understand?’ the Pope asked.

  Swan shook his head. ‘Not really, Holy Father.’

  Callixtus looked out of the window. ‘We are victorious at Belgrade. We have a Christian fleet at sea for the first time in five years. Constantinople is in our grasp – Jerusalem, perhaps. All we need is money. And we need an enormous amount of money, and we need it immediately.’

  Swan had a sinking feeling in his gut.

  ‘Spinelli has money. I need it.’ Callixtus shrugged. ‘Find him and demand that he countersign another bill for twenty thousand ducats. Immediately. Or I will have him arrested. Make this clear.’ Callixtus’ eyes were ruthless. ‘I did not dismiss him. He is not free to go. I have offered him extensive church properties as collateral. Get him back here.’

  Swan nodded politely while his mind whirled. You killed him! rang in his ears. Was that Spinelli? ‘But Holy Father …’

  ‘Speak!’

  ‘Surely the Medici bank can offer you …’ Swan looked at the marble floor.

  ‘The Medici are fine men, but I need the kind of money only Spain can provide, and the Spinelli have the agencies in Spain to get the money,’ Callixtus said, and for a moment, he sounded like a Borgia. ‘The Church in Italy is mortgaged to the last altar cloth. The Church in Spain is rich. Trust me, Messire Suane. I know. I was a Spaniard.’

  ‘Yes, Holy Father.’

  ‘Find Spinelli. Have him read this letter. Get him to issue you a letter of credit.’ He paused. ‘When that is done – today if you can manage it – I will send this letter to the Archbishop of Milan. Understand? Then take any letter he gives you, and any … other instructions you have received, and go to Venice. These two letters are for the Doge and for the Archbishop there. Believe me, they are both about money. Send me all the replies by trusted men, but take the letter of credit from Venice straight to Hunyadi. Not Capistrano, Hunyadi. Understand?’

  Thinking quickly, Swan considered the route he would employ.

  ‘I will need some money of my own,’ he said.

  ‘Use your own, I have none,’ the Pope snapped.

  Swan continued to look at the floor. ‘Has Spinelli left Rome?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no idea. Probably. It is up to you to find
him,’ the Pontiff said.

  ‘Holy Father, that could take days,’ Swan said, as calmly as he could manage.

  ‘Best be about it, then. The fate of the Christian world lies with you, Swan. Find the banker and get me money by whatever means is necessary, and take it to Hunyadi. In time for him to march on Constantinople while our fleet harries the Turk. Now, Messire Suane. I have no one else to send. Rightly or wrongly, I sent all my best soldiers with the cardinal and the fleet. You and Orsini are what I have, and I have other work for him. Go with God.’

  Swan bowed again and the Pope blessed him.

  Swan had grown up at courts. He paused.

  ‘You are dismissed,’ the Pope said, a little pettishly.

  Swan nodded. ‘And yet, Holy Father …’ he said.

  Callixtus made a noise.

  Swan knew he should simply take his demands to Jacob, but he was not receiving the grants he’d been promised. He cleared his throat. ‘Holy Father, I have served the great Bessarion …’ he said carefully.

  ‘Yes. Now you serve me. Get you gone!’ Callixtus said.

  Swan set his face and moved to the door. ‘Holy Father,’ he murmured, and slipped out through the double doors. Then he turned left, not right, and went to where he had glimpsed the chamberlain at his desk a week before.

  There was the man himself.

  ‘Done?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘To a round turn,’ Swan spat.

  ‘Wait for me,’ Jacob said, rising. ‘He has another appointment.’

  Swan found that he was slick with sweat, and angry. He stood there for a minute, breathing slowly. He was tempted to walk away. To ride away from Rome, perhaps all the way to England. He was fairly certain that he had the price of a fine farm, and perhaps even a manor, in his purse.

  He began breathing through his nose.

  ‘He really doesn’t know much about you,’ Jacob said. The German inclined towards fat and he was sweating freely. The pale blond hairs of what might, on a more hirsute man, have been his moustache were slick with perspiration.

  Swan said nothing.

  ‘The Holy Father. All he knows is that Bessarion and Colonna and I told him to use you. To find Spinelli. And if Antonelli gets word of what we’re doing, there will be … difficulties.’ The German chamberlain shrugged. ‘He is a hard man, our Pope. But he is in a very difficult place.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I was promised a title and an estate as a reward. I …’ Swan had been about to claim he’d won Belgrade single-handedly, but despite his anger, that was one lie he wouldn’t tell.

  Jacob shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Ser Thomas. To be honest, I suspect he means to do these things, but … A new crisis has arisen; a new opportunity. The crusade goes on.’

  Swan nodded. He dropped all the parchments on the chamberlain’s desk.

  The chamberlain shot to his feet. ‘What?’

  Swan shook his head. ‘I’m going back to Bessarion,’ he said. ‘Good day.’

  He walked quickly down the hall. Signor Antonelli was standing in an alcove, the full weight of the sun on him, making his non-clerical black look very black indeed.

  ‘Ser Thomas!’ Jacob called. ‘Please. This is a misunderstanding.’

  Antonelli put a hand on Swan’s arm. ‘A word with you, ser,’ he said.

  Swan frowned.

  The pressure from Antonelli’s hand became insistent. ‘I will give you one hundred ducats for a look at the letters you carry,’ he said. He smiled at Swan. ‘Come. We are all men of the world here, and I am in a hurry.’

  Swan looked at Antonelli. ‘Move your hand before I cut it off,’ he said.

  Antonelli’s hand flew away like a bird. His ruddy complexion paled. ‘You dare?’

  Swan’s eyelashes fluttered rapidly. He was busy restraining himself from murder, and for a moment it robbed him of the power of speech. In the end, he mastered himself and walked away, leaving Antonelli pale and trembling.

  ‘I will not forget this!’ the banker shouted.

  Swan didn’t reel in shock, but he knew in that moment that it had been Antonelli, not the Pope, shouting. You killed him? I told you to bring him here, you cretin!

  Similar voices. But Antonelli was more shrill and the man was on the edge of murder himself. He put a hand on his sword. ‘Calm yourself,’ he said.

  Swan heard the chamberlain coming, but he was already at the door to the anteroom. He went through the double doors and pulled them shut behind him.

  The anteroom was empty. Antonelli must have been the Pope’s last private appointment. Swan couldn’t stop himself from noting such things. Or Antonelli was holding appointments alongside the Pope.

  But Swan was out of the waiting rooms by then, and well on his way out of the fortress. He didn’t care if they arrested him, but no one made any attempt to stop him. And an hour later, he was sitting in Bessarion’s study.

  ‘I cannot serve the Pope,’ he said.

  Bessarion was writing. His senior bodyguard, a Greek called Giannis, was sitting too, his curved sword sheathed across his hands. He smiled at Swan, but Swan could not smile back. His mood was foul.

  Bessarion looked up for a moment, and one heavily eyebrowed eye flashed. Then the head was bent again. ‘This does not surprise me much,’ he admitted.

  ‘You sent me to him!’ Swan protested.

  Bessarion glanced at him. ‘I did not stop you from going,’ he said. ‘I would have, if I had had any choice. He is desperate, and you have the skills he needs.’ Bessarion dipped his pen. He was writing in Greek and thus quickly and freely. ‘You will have to do his bidding,’ he said.

  Swan pursed his lips. ‘No. I could simply leave Rome.’

  Bessarion’s head came up with a start and the small cap on the back of his head slipped. ‘Oh dear. Would you, though?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I think I am done, Eminence. You have no use for me, and the Holy Father …’ Swan paused. ‘Let me see, Eminence. He … declined to reward me for Belgrade because he seems to have forgotten my role there; not, you must admit, a good omen for the future. He sends me as a courier, but adds to my courier role some sort of mission to find Messire Spinelli. And even there, I carry a letter. I am not allowed to know what it is that Spinelli has. The Holy Father made it clear enough that I was to force Spinelli … like a thug. I suspect this is how he sees me. And then I am to take the letter of credit I have forced out of Messire Spinelli, a man for whom I have some esteem, and I am to ride post-haste to Belgrade and pass these funds to Hunyadi, though, of course, by then Spinelli will have cancelled the bill or worse. It is clear to me that I am not being told any of the truth. And finally, the cream of the jest, Antonelli offers me a hundred ducats to my face to show him the Pontiff’s letters, as if this is how business is done in the Curia. Which in fact I think is the case.’

  Giannis scratched his nose. ‘Two bravos are outside the stable even now, Eminence.’ He shrugged. ‘I think they are Orsini, but perhaps they are someone else’s.’

  Bessarion shook his head. ‘When did Spinelli leave the Holy Father?’ he asked.

  Swan thought back. ‘The last few days. Not any longer ago than that. I’d wager from what I saw … and heard … that the Holy Father only knew he was gone in the last few hours.’

  Bessarion wiped his round spectacles on a cotton towel and laid them carefully by his papyrus. ‘If Spinelli has broken, then I am poor as well. He held most of my ready cash and he was one of the few bankers who would make a loan on books. He knew a great deal about books.’

  ‘And silk,’ Giannis said. He was scratching under his very Greek beard. ‘My pardon, Eminence. Last time you sent me to his desk, he was discoursing on silk prices in Alexandria and in the Morea. I grew up with silk,’ the Greek man said. ‘And the Other Dmitri is from Mistra.’

  Bessarion smiled at the word ‘Mistra’.

  ‘I need you to find Spinelli,’ Bessarion said.

  Swan thought about it for a moment. ‘Can you explain why?’ he asked.r />
  Bessarion met his eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Except that it is about money.’

  Swan sighed. ‘The half-million ducats? The old Pope’s treasure? That money?’

  Bessarion laid his pen down very carefully. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Please repeat that.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘The old Pope’s treasure,’ he said.

  Bessarion began to laugh. ‘Oh, my son, it is like having Messire Bracchio … that is, Alessandro, here with us. Oh, my. It had not occurred to me that it is about the old Pope’s missing money. Oh, but it might be …’ The Greek cardinal rose to his feet. He was clearly addressing the Curia, as his head was turned that way.

  Giannis looked at Swan and gave a very expressive shrug, the better for its Hellenic expertise.

  Swan was still enjoying the notion that he had done something as well as Alessandro.

  ‘You know of the old Pope’s treasure, eh?’ Bessarion said.

  Swan shook his head.

  Bessarion frowned. ‘How …’

  ‘I overheard a conversation,’ Swan said.

  Bessarion took a deep breath. ‘Before my day,’ he said. ‘But Eugenios had a treasure. There are various guesses as to its value …’

  Swan struck his forehead with his hand. ‘Oh, Eminence, I have heard this.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Just another old wives’ tale …’

  ‘Well,’ Bessarion said. ‘Perhaps not.’

  The three men looked at each other.

  Bessarion leaned back. ‘It is really before my time. Eugenios was financing the reconquest of the Papal States … at the same time as trying to defeat the Hussites. He raised a great deal of money.’ Bessarion smiled. ‘There is a delightful irony in this, Thomas. You know your father led one expedition against the Hussites.’

  Swan stopped dead.

  ‘And in fact he raised another expedition. Eugenios funded an English army to go to Bohemia, but the war with France was heating up and the army fought in France instead. Paid for by the Pope. Your father never forgave … anyway, that’s not germane.’ He smiled. ‘Although when the Royal Council stole Cardinal Beaufort’s army must be about the time you were engendered, my dear young man. The point is that Eugenios was the most ingenious financier ever to wear the tiara.’