Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 1

by Christian Cameron

  Di Brescia shook his head. Both men were now tense. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, pleasantly enough. ‘Or perhaps not. But you did not pay to know.’

  Forteguerri was formulating his reply. Swan could see a dozen roads to a duel and almost none to peace, and what he’d seen of Forteguerri he liked.

  So he simply took the cards out from under both hands and rapidly shuffled them together. ‘Wine here,’ he said loudly enough to be heard. ‘May I show you a game the Hungarians play?’

  Swan would very much have liked to end the evening by triumphantly winning a thousand ducats from someone, but churchmen were not as easy to fleece as German knights, and he had to settle for ending the evening up little more than five ducats. He and Cesare walked through a silent Rome.

  ‘A little different from the election,’ Swan said. ‘Remember saving the Colonna boy?’

  Di Brescia laughed. ‘How is Alessandro?’ he said.

  ‘I expect he might be bored, by now. But he is legitimised, his name entered in the Golden Book, and wedded.’ Swan smiled. ‘He may even be at sea. Has Venice sent a contingent to the Pope’s fleet?’

  Di Brescia paused under a street lamp. The house was prosperous enough to maintain one.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘Venice does not want to offend the Turks. Not yet.’

  ‘Really?’ Swan asked. ‘I was there three months ago. They were quite prepared to fight. The galleys were in the water.’

  Even in the darkness he could read Di Brescia’s look.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Of course they changed their minds.’

  Both men laughed.

  ‘It was this alley right here,’ Swan said, looking at where the three of them had made their stand against the Orsini thugs. ‘You, too, are married,’ he said. ‘Or so I hear from Giannis.’

  Di Brescia’s face was hidden in the darkness. ‘I am, at that,’ he said. ‘My father arranged it. A good match.’

  ‘Not good enough to keep you from Donna Lucrezia’s,’ Swan said before he could stop himself.

  Di Brescia paused. ‘Some day, you will get yourself killed with one of those little words,’ he said.

  Swan swallowed.

  ‘Alessandro is married. I am married.’ Di Brescia sighed. ‘How old is his wife?’ he asked.

  ‘Bembo?’ Swan asked. ‘I was not there for the wedding. But I think she is fifteen. I think someone told me this.’

  Di Brescia laughed, the sound a trifle wild. ‘Mine’s eleven and a half,’ he said.

  Swan paused. ‘I’m an arse,’ he said. ‘I apologise.’

  ‘Good. And thank you. As I say, my father arranged it. It settled a good deal of money on us. But … it is like living with a child. In fact, I am living with a child.’ Di Brescia turned into a narrow alley. ‘This is me. Come and meet her. She always waits up. Someone told her that’s how a wife behaves.’ He sounded angry.

  ‘Another time,’ Swan said vaguely.

  ‘Now,’ Di Brescia said. He knocked, and the door opened instantly. A pair of servants stepped into the street with torches lit, and ushered their master inside. One of them bowed to Swan, eyed his long sword, and kept his distance.

  Swan went up the two steps and found himself looking at a girl about four feet tall or perhaps a little taller. She curtsied deeply. ‘Any friend of my husband’s is always welcome in this house,’ she said.

  She looked like a child, and sounded like one, as well. Her very adult gown, worn over an underdress, could not hide her age. Her voice snapped orders, and was nasal and a little harsh. The childlike tone penetrated a little too well.

  Wine appeared.

  ‘And what were you gentlemen doing?’ she asked. She sat at an elaborate embroidery frame. A dozen wax candles burned to show how industriously she had spent the evening.

  ‘Playing cards,’ Di Brescia said. His voice sounded artificial. ‘And you, my dear?’

  ‘I am just working at this altar cloth for the church,’ she said. ‘It is a frontal, you see?’ She smiled. ‘Cesare has seen it many times.’

  ‘But this is beautiful, madonna,’ Swan said. He didn’t have to exaggerate. Her embroidery was superb.

  She flushed with pleasure. ‘Ah, signor, you do me too much honour. Here, let me pour you some wine.’ She took up a pitcher as if she was a servant.

  ‘There is no need, my dear,’ Cesare said. ‘Let Michael pour, or we will pour for ourselves. I hate to keep you up so late.’

  ‘So late? Am I a child to be sent to bed?’ she asked.

  Swan attempted to vanish into a seat cushion.

  ‘I do not think you need to dismiss me already. This gentleman was kind enough to speak to me as if I was something better than a child, or a piece of furniture.’ She frowned.

  ‘My dear, I meant nothing of the sort …’

  ‘You do not compliment my embroidery. You say nothing when I speak to the cardinal about you, when the abbess comes to our house, when …’

  ‘Beatrice!’ Cesare all but spat.

  Swan took a breath. ‘It is very good wine. Is this your own?’ he asked.

  ‘There! Again, your friend treats me as if I lived here. Why, thank you, messire. In fact, this is one of the best wines of Verona, the city from which I come. I serve it here with pride, for it is as good as anything these Romans have.’

  Swan drank a little more. It was very good. He smiled.

  Cesare looked as if he might explode.

  Swan fingered his beard. ‘Verona is quite close to Brescia, I believe?’

  ‘Very close,’ Beatrice said. ‘All our families are intertwined, and with Vicenza too.’ She smiled. ‘I am sorry, husband. I will remove myself.’

  Her contrition was as quick to appear as her anger. She swept out of the room.

  Swan looked over his very elegant Venetian wine glass at Cesare.

  Cesare put his head in his hands. ‘What am I to do? Strike her?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘She’s eleven.’

  ‘And it is past her bedtime, and she gets like this. Often I stay in. She’s good enough company. She reads well …’

  Swan shook his head. ‘I think you ought to have said “no” to your father,’ he said.

  ‘I needed the money,’ Di Brescia said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘I like her.’

  ‘I like her too. In five years or ten, she’ll be an excellent wife with a fine temper. Right now, I feel I’m bringing up someone else’s child.’ He sat quietly for a moment.

  ‘I need to find Thomas Spinelli,’ Swan said.

  Di Brescia sat back. ‘You too? The Pope is looking for him everywhere. Half the rogues and bravos in Rome are looking for him. The word is he stole something.’

  Swan frowned. ‘Our cardinal says not.’

  Di Brescia made an irritated gesture. ‘Our cardinal? Who refused to find me a position in the Curia?’

  Swan sat back. His friend was … different. Very much not in control of himself. It seemed odd, as Cesare was the rich one who always had money and, like Alessandro, had an answer to every question.

  ‘Are you taking sword lessons now?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Who has time for such stuff?’ Cesare murmured.

  Swan stood up. ‘Cesare, I’ve only been gone four months, for the love of God.’

  Di Brescia put his head in his hands again. ‘I swear, it all went wrong during the election. It is as if, after the election, Bessarion decided he had wanted to be Pope after all, and blamed me. You weren’t here to blame, and neither was Alessandro, so I took it. I was marrying and needed a better job … at least a better title. Bessarion refused me. It was Giannis who found me this … place.’

  Swan didn’t like his friend’s tone, which was weak and had a whine to it he didn’t associate with the northerner.

  ‘So you have heard nothing of Spinelli?’ Swan asked.

  Di Brescia looked miserable. ‘No.’ He looked at Swan. ‘I wish you would not ask about Spinelli.’

  Meaning you know some
thing, and I’m not on your side. Damn and damn.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, I hope.’ He smiled, and made some small talk about Forteguerri, who, it appeared, was quite the coming man in the Curia. Swan remembered his master, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, from a trip to Germany.

  On Di Brescia’s doorstep, he checked his belt purse, and loosened the sword in his scabbard, but his walk home along the Tiber was completely uneventful. He lay on his old palette in Bessarion’s house and thought about life, and marriage, and age, and other deep thoughts, until he fell asleep.

  In the morning, he asked Clemente to make enquiries about Spinelli along the Tiber and in the servants’ areas of the papal fortress. Clemente revelled in such missions, and Swan knew that eventually the boy was going to resent being a servant.

  He smiled.

  Swan walked across Rome to the Jewish ghetto and borrowed five hundred ducats against his Venetian bank. He chose not to do the same business with the Medici, although they did transactions inside the Vatican.

  He had a number of contacts in the Jewish community. The Spanish Jew who counted out the five hundred ducats in gold was David, but Swan could not remember his patronymic. Still, he was friendly and attentive, and Swan took the plunge.

  ‘Do you have any news on what happened to Spinelli?’ he asked.

  David frowned. ‘Who wants to know?’ he asked. ‘The Pope?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I am not the first to ask?’

  ‘Do I look like someone who knows the great Thomas Spinelli?’ David asked.

  ‘Do you think fifty ducats would help you look like someone who knows Spinelli?’

  ‘Do I have to loan you the ducats?’ David raised an eyebrow.

  Swan had to laugh. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  David shrugged, but when the boy came with Swan’s cloak – brushed – David made a mark on the ledger and handed over ten more ducats. ‘That’s what it will cost you. But the man you want is Pepino the Carter, and he is not of my race. Or really, any race. I will not take your money. But he will.’

  Swan walked away, puzzling that over.

  He took one of his Arab geldings and rode to the market under the aqueduct, where fifteen minutes’ work got him a great many offers for his horse but no sign of Pepino the Carter, although everyone knew him.

  Eventually, he sat and took a cup of good, plain wine under an awning while a boy was sent to find the carter. A bell rang the hour, and Swan heard a laugh and saw Messire Forteguerri. He rose and the two men bowed.

  ‘You wear a sword,’ Forteguerri said, cocking his head. ‘I noted it last night. That’s quite a lot of sword for Rome.’

  Forteguerri wore a slim arming sword; the sort of sword Swan had worn every day in Rome, a year before, against the law but permissible in the streets, if not in the Curia or the law courts.

  Swan motioned for wine and sat, and a chair was brought for Forteguerri.

  ‘To be honest, I’d stopped thinking of it.’ Swan shrugged, thinking that he’d only been gone four months and he’d forgotten almost everything. ‘I was in Hungary,’ he said.

  Forteguerri nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I rather admire your reputation. It’s just a very large sword.’

  A cup of local wine arrived and Forteguerri took a sip. ‘What brings you into the market at this hour?’ he asked.

  Swan was busy noting that the canon lawyer seemed to have two men-at-arms loitering at his beck and call. Both big men, Romagnols with thick beards and big hands. And swords.

  Swan leaned back. ‘I’m looking for Spinelli,’ he said baldly. ‘Isn’t everyone?’

  Forteguerri paused with the cup halfway to his lips.

  He leaned forward. ‘I was going to remark on your pretty Arab mare and then ask you what church you preferred, and move slowly along until you revealed yourself,’ he said. ‘You have saved me so much time. Look somewhere else.’

  Swan shook his head as his boy emerged from the crowd around a farrier’s stall and slipped past the two men-at-arms.

  The boy was quick. He saw Swan with another man and walked right by.

  Swan waited until the boy had vanished into the crowd to the north.

  ‘Very well,’ he said easily, and rose to his feet. He smiled at the lawyer. He thought of saying something about serving the Pope, but instead he shrugged. ‘Enjoy your wine.’

  He walked away. He knew that one of the men-at-arms was following him, and made no attempt to lose the man as he walked through the animal market. He passed a man with a pair of heifers for sale, and another man with very recently dead veal, and two young horses rolling their eyes at all the blood.

  He wondered whether he should have made a pretence of being tough and difficult, just for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings, but Forteguerri seemed too sophisticated for such posturing. And Swan wanted to get to the boy.

  Swan could see him, but he stopped to examine the horses, and then began to talk to the man who owned them. He talked for a while, slipping between the horses, raising their hooves and looking at their teeth. He had the farmer write the price down on a scrap of parchment and give it to him, and he – rather familiarly – put his hand on the man’s shoulder before turning away.

  Of course, the thug behind him had to stop to question the man with the horses. Swan walked right past his urchin and snapped his fingers, low, out of sight, and then began to walk. He went into the alley behind the small church, and simply followed the smell of human urine until he found a wretched little side alley that locals used as a latrine. He added to the stench.

  ‘The carter is hiding,’ the boy said.

  ‘You know where?’ Swan asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You are a smart boy,’ Swan said, tying his braes and adjusting his doublet. ‘I have a ducat for you, all gold, all yours. And five more if you find the carter. No crap, boy. Find me any time at Bessarion’s.’

  ‘Someone else said, if you want Spinelli, ask the fucking monks, beg your pardon, messire. The monks the Holy Father removed from the Lateran.’ Street urchins in Rome knew a great deal of theology, some canon law, and a fair amount of local politics.

  Swan turned to look at the boy. He was maybe twelve or fifteen, depending on the extent of his malnutrition. His eyes were unevenly spaced, but otherwise he looked healthy. His hair was a dirty blond, and the rest of him was best described as dirty. In a squalid alley where men pissed, he stank.

  ‘What will you do with a ducat?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Eat,’ the boy said.

  ‘Name?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Francesco,’ the boy said.

  Swan nodded. ‘I don’t want to give you a gold ducat,’ Swan said. ‘Someone will only kill you for it. Here’s some silver. You don’t even have a purse, boy. Christ. I don’t need you on my conscience. Come to Bessarion’s house at twilight. Food, and money.’

  The boy shrugged.

  Swan walked past him, out of the alley. He saw the soldier. He grinned, which threw the man off. ‘Stinks back there,’ he said.

  The man frowned. He stood there – caught like the amateur he was – and then, as if a figure in a play, turned and followed Swan. It was quite a performance. Swan winced for the man, but assumed that Forteguerri was using men-at-arms because that’s all he had.

  Swan walked back across the market for his horse, annoyed that he had beef blood on his good low boots. Doubly annoyed that he had so little to show for his time. But now convinced that there was something to know.

  At Bessarion’s he enquired of Giannis about Forteguerri. Giannis shrugged.

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ he admitted. ‘But all I know is that he’s well connected, considers himself an expert on war, and works for Cardinal Piccolomini.’ Giannis sighed. ‘I am not the right man for this. You do all the spying, and I’ll kill some Turks.’

  Swan nodded.

  Bessarion gave him half an hour. ‘I have smoothed over your rudeness with the Holy Father,’ he said.
r />   Swan shrugged. ‘Do you know a gentleman, a lawyer, named Forteguerri?’

  Bessarion rubbed his beard. ‘Yes. I have met him. He collects texts on war. He is in minor orders and intends to be ordained a priest, I believe.’

  ‘He warned me off looking for Spinelli,’ Swan said.

  Bessarion folded his hands and looked at the cross over Swan’s head. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Would I only annoy you if I said that this is the sort of complexity I’d like you to explain to me? Rather than my having to explain it to you?’ He smiled, but Swan was stung.

  ‘Eminence, I understand, but I am far behind here. Many things have changed. I do not have Alessandro’s network.’ He sighed. ‘Can you tell me what monks were recently thrown out of the Lateran?’ he asked.

  Bessarion smiled. ‘There, at least, I can be a useful guide. The Augustan canons were thrown out of the cathedral. It’s all rather sordid.’

  ‘Where could I find them?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Cosimo di Montserrat is at the church of San Silvestro. I think most of the canons and a great many of the friars are there as well.’ Bessarion raised an eyebrow. ‘What does that have to do with Spinelli?’

  ‘A lead, if possibly a foolish lead. Would you give me a note for Messire di Montserrat?’ Swan rose.

  Bessarion wrote out a note and signed it with his personal seal. ‘I am disturbed that this matter has got so deep, so fast. Do you have any idea what is happening?’

  Swan shook his head. ‘I think that the person who could tell us is the Holy Father.’ He shrugged. ‘Who wants Spinelli found. I’m going to visit Spinelli’s villa outside the walls and then go to San Silvestro. If I am not back before dark, Eminence, would you please order that a boy named Francesco, who may come seeking me, is taken, fed, cleaned and held?’

  Bessarion smiled. ‘With Alessandro, I was never sure whether he worked for me or I worked for him. I see you are much the same. Go with God.’

  Swan collected Kendal, who’d have had enough of cooling his heels. He had left him with Bessarion several times because he thought the rangy English archer would make him even more conspicuous, but it was clear he was plenty conspicuous on his own.

  Kendal looked at Swan’s sword. ‘Are we fightin’, sir?’