Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 1

by Christian Cameron

  She nodded. ‘Listen, then. Because you have just done me a nice favour, telling me Spinelli is in Florence. The Pope borrowed twenty thousand ducats from Spinelli. This was before the news of Belgrade.’

  ‘Yes,’ Swan said.

  ‘He gave Spinelli the tiara. You understand? He pawned the sacred crown.’ She laughed. ‘And now Spinelli has taken it and he’s gone.’

  Swan closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. He blinked a few times as some pieces fell out of the puzzle and a few more fitted into place. ‘Oh, God.’

  She put a hand on his arm, just for a moment, and then swept the ducats into a drawer. ‘I am glad we are friends again. You know, last year, you were not really worth my time, but now I think you are. Come and have a meal with me some time.’

  She seemed perfectly serious.

  He grinned. ‘Donna, I would be delighted,’ he said.

  In the plain antechamber, Kendal was watching two churchmen flirting with each other. He was writhing in agony.

  ‘I don’t think Rome is good for you,’ Swan said kindly. ‘Don’t come during an election.’

  ‘Sweet Christ!’ Kendal said. ‘Everything the Wolf said is true.’

  Swan nodded, and went through the doors.

  He awoke in the morning with a clear head and a better sense of himself, and went down to eat apple tarts and drink cider with the kitchen staff.

  Giannis was already there. He shook his head as soon as he saw Swan.

  ‘No body. My man smelled it; he says there must have been a corpse, but it’s gone now.’ Giannis shrugged in his Greek way and Swan cursed in his English way.

  Later, he went into the small Red Chamber at the back of the papal palazzo and waited until Jacob saw him. The German waved and beckoned him into his own office.

  ‘Over your tantrum?’ he said.

  Swan thought of a variety of replies, but the German was smiling, and Swan finally had to shrug. ‘Yes.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘Listen, messire. They don’t really even know we are here, the great ones. If I fall down dead this moment, there will be about an hour during which His Holiness will remember my name and what I do for him. But in an hour, another chamberlain will appear, someone else will be maestro of the household, and by the time my cooling corpse is dragged out of this room, I’ll be forgotten.’

  Swan narrowed his eyes.

  ‘It is foolish to be mad at the Holy Father. In truth, you should be flattered that he knows you exist. On the other hand, I know you exist and what exertions you perform, eh? And as long as I am not a cooling corpse, I will take care of you. It is not that he cares nothing for us; it is that he has a thousand servants and we all look alike.’

  Swan thought of Donna Lucrezia. ‘I hear what you say,’ he said.

  ‘Good. What have you learned?’ Jacob asked.

  ‘Spinelli is almost certainly in Florence. It is also possible that he was murdered here in Rome. If you want me to find him, I have to go to Florence.’ He paused. ‘May I tell you something?’

  Jacob nodded, sat his heavy form in a broad chair, and waved to a stool. ‘Sit.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I wish to summarise a great many speculations in two sentences. None of this is fact. But if I am to work for His Holiness, I feel I need to … float these speculations.’

  Jacob leaned forward. ‘Excellent.’

  Swan fingered his beard. ‘The Pope …’

  ‘The Holy Father,’ Jacob corrected.

  ‘The Holy Father screwed twenty thousand ducats out of Messire Spinelli sometime in mid-August,’ Swan said. ‘Spinelli demanded some surety, and the Holy Father put Martin’s tiara in his hand.’

  Jacob went white. It was a dramatic transformation. All the blood left his face.

  ‘Then the Holy Father pledged the same tiara to Antonelli,’ Swan said. ‘Except that he didn’t tell Antonelli that the crown of the Popes was now in Spinelli’s hands. Spinelli caught wind of the Holy Father’s manoeuvre and knew that the bottom was about to fall out of the Roman money market. He fled. He has the tiara.’ Swan sat back. He didn’t want to reveal what he had overheard. And he didn’t think that the rotting body in the culvert was Spinelli, although he knew it might have been. The timing didn’t add up.

  ‘Oh, mein gott,’ Jacob said. Then he straightened up. ‘Of course, none of this is true. Spinelli has fled owing the Holy Father money.’

  ‘Have you seen the tiara lately?’ Swan asked.

  Jacob blinked.

  Swan leaned forward. ‘Before I returned,’ he said, ‘did the Holy Father ask … someone … to look into the matter of the old Pope’s treasure?’ He spoke very quietly.

  ‘Cardinal Piccolomini,’ Jacob said. ‘Perhaps I should not tell you this, but … I understand why it applies, and I assume you do, too.’

  ‘I see that if Spinelli knew anything, and Piccolomini was breathing down his neck …’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘It is like a military disaster, Messire Jacob. One bad decision at a time.’

  The German chamberlain chewed on the end of a quill.

  ‘I will have to go to Florence,’ Swan said. ‘The Holy Father suggested I travel on my own funds. I have no funds. I am owed some months of back pay as a soldier and I can perhaps sell some jewels but Rome is a dreadful market.’

  Jacob shrugged. ‘Florence is an excellent market,’ he said.

  Swan nodded. ‘I think this can be done. Now listen. There is a young lady – I wish to marry her. If I am to go to Florence and Milan and Venice, I wish to see her; to ask her to marry me. Do I need to explain? My cardinal promised me a reward and so did the Holy Father.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘You were promised a title and a fine estate,’ he said. He shrugged.

  ‘I was,’ Swan said.

  ‘The Holy Father has sold both,’ Jacob said. ‘He is desperate. Despite the victory at Belgrade.’

  Swan had suspected something like, but the reality caused a spike of indignation.

  Jacob frowned. ‘If I give you my word that another title will be bestowed, will you solve this for us?’

  Swan stood up. ‘That’s a little like pawning the tiara twice, isn’t it, messire? I think we’re back where we were two days ago.’

  Jacob rose too. ‘Find Spinelli and get us the tiara. You have my word that by the time you return, you will have a better reward, and a fitting title.’

  ‘The title is the least thing,’ Swan said. ‘I really care nothing for the title.’

  ‘That’s unfortunate, as it is the easiest thing for the Holy Father to give you,’ Jacob said. ‘I’m sorry, but as you are being blunt, I will be too.’

  Swan swore, and took his gloves out of his belt. ‘Damn it. All right. Give me the letter from Spinelli and hold the dispatches. I assume that the Holy Father was … shading the truth … when he requested me to get a further loan from Spinelli. He wants the man himself or the tiara.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘He trusts no one in this. I know no more than you. I know there is this letter for Spinelli which he insists must be delivered. He has never mentioned the tiara, and from this moment, Ser Thomas, neither must you. Get us Spinelli.’

  Swan looked at the letters. ‘If he is alive, I will bring him. Then I am not going to Milan or Venice this trip?’

  Jacob shrugged. ‘They need to go,’ he said, pointing at the letters. ‘They demand money.’ He spread his hands. ‘I promise you we need that money.’

  The two men looked at each other. Then Jacob stared into space, thinking, and Swan let him think. He was beginning to warm to the fat German.

  ‘I will hold the dispatches for Milan and Venice. Get Spinelli and come back. As quick as you can. My bell is ringing … I must go.’ Jacob nodded.

  Swan gave him a casual wave. ‘Go. I’ll get it done.’

  ‘I count on you, Ser Thomas. Words I seldom say.’

  Swan took the letters and put them in an oiled silk pouch that Jacob provided. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. ‘Damn it.’

>   An hour later, with Kendal, Clemente and all of Bessarion’s ready money, Swan was on the road to Florence. He stayed in two inns, each as flea-ridden as the last, full of bullied women and fawning men, and he drank bad wine and ate bad food and wondered why men loved Tuscany. Each time he stopped to have his glass riding flask filled, he regretted it, and the leering villains who kept the inns gave him sour piss to drink. Twice he doubled back and dismounted, watching the Roman road from the same hills that bandit lookouts used, and thinking about the men who built the roads, about the legions, about the emperors. He watched pedlars and merchant traffic, and once he and Kendal drove off a pair of utterly incompetent would-be robbers when they tried to cut a mule out of a caravan.

  The robbers were so useless, so obviously starving, that neither he nor Kendal used the sharps of their swords.

  The merchant, a Florentine, castigated his guards, a pair of thugs who looked as if they might have robbed a merchant or two in their time. They had arming coats, shoulder armour and one of the two had a placard, a sort of half-breastplate, that had been meant to reinforce a lighter armour for jousting and served very little purpose worn alone. Neither man had lifted a finger when the robbers cut the rope on the pack animals, and neither had done anything to round up the straying animals, either. They looked at the merchant with vague anger, like dumb animals too often beaten.

  Swan wondered how many armies were composed of these brutes.

  But before they’d passed the turning for Siena, the merchant came abreast of them, bowed and offered them dinner and lodging in Florence, which they accepted with alacrity.

  ‘Andrea Banchi, Silks and Wools,’ the man said. He looked back along his little convoy. He had two apprentices on horseback, and the thugs, to watch ten mules and two donkeys.

  Swan did no real work, but he did ride up and down the little convoy for the better part of a day as if he was a hired soldier. Kendal shot him some looks of reproach. Clemente, on the other hand, rode with the apprentices and laughed a great deal.

  It was almost dark on the third day when they arrived in Florence.

  Swan suddenly discovered why men loved Tuscany. He’d been to Florence before, but seldom in early autumn, when the sunset tinged the marble and the warm stone had the hue of roses. The city was beautiful, and Banchi’s bottega or workshop was near San Croce.

  ‘You think our man’s religious?’ Clemente asked his master. ‘Spinelli lived by San Croce in Rome.’

  Swan thought about that. It was true; men tended to venerate the same saints wherever they were, and liked things that were familiar.

  Banchi’s house and shop were very pleasant. In fact, his Florentine host was a man of more property than Swan might have thought, out on the road, and his wife, who gave every appearance of being a fine lady, with a heraldic medallion and beautiful manners, was both welcoming and matronly.

  Swan’s fine horses earned him the attention of the local innkeeper himself. Clemente and two of the apprentices took all the horses to the inn’s yard, and the innkeeper returned in person to bow at the door of the silk merchant’s shop. He promised special care for Swan’s horses with an extraordinary obsequiousness.

  Swan knew when he was being spied upon. Florence was famous for its inns and the men who kept them reported to the Council of Eight and sometimes to the leading families.

  ‘Do you know of Messire Tommaso Spinelli?’ Swan asked the maestro over a very pleasant dinner.

  Banchi winced. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘All the cloth Spinelli live around Santa Croce.’ He waved an arm. ‘Messire Tommaso has houses by the old amphitheatre.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Can you give me directions?’

  Donna Banchi laughed. ‘He is my husband’s newest rival in the silk business. He stole one of our best weavers.’

  ‘Newest rival?’ Swan asked.

  Banchi shrugged. ‘Spinelli is breaking up his bank and returning to the trade in which he started; weaving silk for church vestments. There is so much business that I cannot complain about him returning, can I? And Buoncorso was already here. Spinelli has merely joined us.’ He shrugged. ‘My wife and Spinelli’s are cousins; Peruzzi. She died last spring.’

  ‘We were friends.’ Donna Banchi said.

  ‘Did you like him?’ Swan asked.

  She smiled. ‘Oh, yes. He is a good man. He was a good husband, for all that he spent months every year in Rome, which she hated.’ She shrugged. ‘Milking the Curia for money … rough work.’

  ‘You are from Rome,’ Maestro Banchi said, obviously warning his wife.

  Swan winked at Kendal, who was eating the excellent food and behaving like a gentleman, despite understanding only one word in three. ‘We’re English,’ he said. ‘We serve Cardinal Bessarion, but we are not Romans, God forbid.’

  He spoke slowly so that Kendal would hear, and the archer looked up, smiled broadly and repeated the phrase in good Italian. ‘God forbid,’ he said.

  ‘I need to meet with Messire Spinelli,’ Swan said.

  ‘Well, I owe you more than a meal. That mule you saved carried four bags of gold; almost four hundred gold florins, with some ducats and some Spanish money mixed in.’ Banchi laughed. ‘These two gentlemen on their fine horses ran the bandits to earth, got my mule, and didn’t even kill the bastards.’ He nodded. ‘For which the gentle Christ will reward you. I try never to hurt a beggar. If they’d asked for alms …’

  Swan nodded.

  ‘Is Tommaso in some trouble, messire?’ Donna Banchi asked. Swan wanted to curse; women were sensitive and very perceptive.

  He spread his hands in the universal Italian sign for ‘there’s much I could say, but I cannot’. ‘I will not make any trouble for him, if that’s what you mean,’ Swan said, with some falsity.

  ‘I’ll send a boy,’ Banchi said. ‘Florence can be very difficult for foreigners.’ He laughed. ‘He’ll come here, though. I owe him money.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I think I’d rather go to his workshop,’ he said.

  Donna Banchi pointed at the wine and a servant poured. ‘Tommaso does not live over his shop,’ she said.

  ‘It can wait until morning,’ Swan said. He filled his glass flask with Banchi’s excellent wine, and went to the room he shared with Kendal. Clemente slept across the door, but had a nice palette of straw.

  He lay awake as Kendal snored. His sense was that it could not wait until morning, but Florence was a carefully watched city, with citizens who reported strangers, watchful innkeepers and soldiers in the streets. He could not take chances in the city where Antonelli’s master was all powerful.

  If Antonelli had a master. It had not occurred to him until that moment, and he fell asleep thinking of a new possibility.

  The morning was as beautiful as the evening, despite the smell of the dye vats and the sewage. The square by the church of San Croce was spacious and very modern, at least by Roman standards, light and air were plentiful, and the apprentices of Florence, going to their shops just after dawn, looked vastly more prosperous than their brothers in Rome. In fact, Swan saw men passing him in the broad streets wearing wool as good as his own, and he was pleased to see that his lightly embroidered brown wool and his close-cut hose looked at home, as did Kendal’s green and Clemente’s darker brown. Swan wore only his dagger; a sword in Florence was an invitation to be arrested.

  He was also amused by the habit of young professional Florentines to walk rapidly while scribbling on their wood or ivory-bound wax tablets. Half of them were oblivious to their surroundings, writing away or reading notes.

  Swan walked more carefully, but he was new to the environment. The boy leading them made only one turn. The trip was too short for him to identify whether they were being followed, but Swan assumed they were. Very carefully he gave his orders.

  ‘He won’t have the object,’ Swan said. ‘I’m sure of it. But he may run when he sees me, because it means that we are on to his part of the plot. Or he may brazen it out. He’s clearly not in hidin
g. He may expect us. I really don’t know.’

  Messire Spinelli’s shop was new and well appointed. There were boards laid across trestles for tables, and a small stock of silk, mostly clerical red velvet, and two customers, despite the early hour; both clerical embroiderers looking for bargains.

  The boy with them bowed deeply to the apprentice behind the counter and whispered in his ear.

  The young man bowed, in turn, to Swan. ‘As soon as I wait on these gentlemen,’ he said, and he was as good as his word, slipping off behind a curtain.

  Swan made a face. The red velvet was superb. And worth a fortune.

  Before he could draw any conclusions, the apprentice emerged and beckoned, and Swan followed him. He left Kendal in the shop. Clemente was already lounging against the building’s back wall, or at least, Swan hoped so. He thought it possible that the man would bolt when he knew who Swan was.

  He’d met Spinelli twice, both times in near-darkness, but he knew him immediately, and the recognition was mutual. Spinelli was seated at a work table. Most of it was covered in a very carefully made paper pattern for a velvet. On the end were a small coffer and a stack of ledgers.

  Spinelli rose. He sketched a bow, and was clearly ill at ease.

  ‘Messire Suane,’ he said.

  ‘If you wished me well, messire, you might now call me “Ser Thomas” as I am now a knight of Saint Mark.’ Swan smiled and held his hands well apart to show that he was well dressed, unarmed and potentially harmless.

  ‘Of course I wish you well,’ Spinelli said. ‘The Holy Father sent you?’

  Swan bowed. He took the letter from his doublet and held it out.

  Spinelli took it, kissed the seal, and broke it. He read it, and frowned.

  ‘You have other documents for me?’ he asked.

  Swan shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just the letter.’

  Spinelli passed a hand over his face. ‘He thinks …’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I am just a messenger, Maestro. But I must ask you. Do you have the tiara?’

  Spinelli gave him a look of derision. ‘Of course,’ he said.