Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Swan rode back into hell – the north end of the Turkish camp, where the massacre was worst and the consequent brutality greatest. He found Hunyadi in the press. He had with him a standard-bearer and a trumpeter, and great as he was, the crusaders ignored him. Swan rode up, sword sheathed, and offered a salute, and Hunyadi’s eyes gleamed.

  ‘My reserve has gone to loot,’ he said. ‘If the Sultan had a thousand reliable men, he could reverse the result even now and I could do nothing to stop a general massacre.’ Hunyadi watched a pair of ‘crusaders’ tormenting a Turk with the casual evil that causes boys to torment stray dogs.

  Swan rode over. The men didn’t flinch. Swan thought of killing the Turk – but the man was alive and unmaimed. His eyes were a man’s eyes, and before Swan’s conscious mind had taken control, he drew and killed a crusader, his downward stroke clean, efficient and mortal. He pointed his sword at the other.

  ‘Let him go,’ he said.

  He could read in the ‘crusader’ a total lack of understanding. The man could not imagine that he was in the wrong. So he attacked Swan, his face filling with rage and hate, and Swan put him down, too.

  He looked down at the Turk. ‘Come,’ he said.

  He grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled him into the saddle.

  The man twisted. He had a dagger, and he thrust at Swan – a strong, desperate thrust.

  Swan’s pommel intercepted his wrist, and he dropped the man back to the ground. One kick from his horse’s hooves, and the man lay still with the two crusaders.

  Swan looked down at them, and felt nothing.

  Hunyadi rode up next to him. He was silent in an evening full of screams. Finally, he spat.

  ‘War,’ he said.

  He took his trumpeter, and rode away toward the fortress.

  Swan rode on. He had had enough killing. But he did what he could, and it was little enough, and Di Silva and Grazias and Orietto, who’d ridden with Hunyadi’s reserve, joined him when he found them. And, if the truth be told, he joined them in some selective looting. But just west of what had been the harem, they found Šárka. Her arms were red with blood. But she, and a half-dozen other women had pulled another fifty Turkish slaves into a knot, and were defending them. With the camp followers Swan had collected, they made a hundred.

  The English, laden with loot, appeared. After some consultations – night was falling and promised to be uglier yet – Kendal ordered a dozen of his archers and some Hungarians who’d joined them to take down two of the Turkish tents. An hour later, they were set up in the horn work, and they had water, some wine and a camp fire, which seemed like a sign of human life in the darkness.

  Swan sat on an upturned barrel. He was looking at their corral of former slaves and Turkish women. ‘How will we feed them?’ he asked.

  Šárka shook her head. ‘It is enough that we get them through tonight,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow they may wander off, starve, die, or marry Hungarians. It is nothing to me. All we can do is save them tonight, from those monsters.’

  ‘Half of them are Christian women forced by the Turks,’ Swan said.

  ‘Yes,’ Šárka said. ‘Will you walk them all home?’

  5 August 1456, Rome

  Swan rode into the city from the north at midday. The sun was as hot as it had been on the Hungarian plain just fourteen days before. At Swan’s back rode Will Kendal on a fine Arabian, and Clemente on another, and the ‘other’ Dmitri. Behind them were six more horses, the pick of the Turkish horse lines. They had ridden from Belgrade to Rome in fourteen days.

  Men and women in the streets of the Eternal City paused to see them go by. The Turkish horses wore alien saddles and leathers, and they had packs strapped to some. Dmitri himself would have looked like a Turk, to the ignorant, at least in Rome.

  As they passed through the walls, an Orsini soldier on the gate called out, ‘Where from, capitano?’

  Swan reined in. He’d spread the news as he came south from Venice, reasonably sure he could outride his own rumour. ‘Belgrade,’ he called out.

  A young gentleman in last night’s clothes paused. ‘Belgrade?’ he called. ‘What news?’

  Swan was already putting the spurs to his mount. ‘Victory,’ he called, and they were away, headed for Bessarion’s house.

  They were challenged at the gate. The guard was Giannis, and as soon as he recognised Swan, he all but pulled him from his horse. While embracing him, he was speaking Greek over Swan’s shoulder with Dmitri, whose dour demeanor melted when he had someone to address in Greek.

  Giannis’ eyes grew wide. ‘Victory?’ he asked. Perhaps for any Greek, it was hard to believe that the Turks had been beaten.

  Swan nodded. ‘I must tell the cardinal,’ he said.

  Giannis was smiling so broadly it seemed as if his face would split. ‘In his study. Was it bad?’

  ‘Terrible,’ Dmitri said.

  ‘Bloody awful,’ Kendal put in.

  Clemente said nothing.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Even now …’ he began, and then changed his mind. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Grazias is fine.’

  Giannis nodded. ‘Go straight in. I’ll get the horses looked after. Loot?’ he asked, with a certain justifiable envy.

  Swan left Dmitri explaining that while the crusaders had sacked the Turkish camp, the stradiotes had thought to pillage the horse lines.

  He came through the main hall. A dozen secretaries were writing at tall desks, and two boys were running a fan to keep them cool. Rome smelled like a cesspit. A priest in a neat black gown intercepted Swan.

  ‘The cardinal’s day for public reception,’ he began.

  Swan went past him.

  ‘You cannot go up!’ the man said, quietly but fiercely.

  Swan paused with one foot on the well-known steps. ‘You are new here,’ he said kindly. In fact, Belgrade had killed his interest in strife. He was determined to be kind to every man and woman he ever met, as long as he lived.

  The priest stood up straight. ‘I am new,’ he admitted stiffly.

  ‘I am Thomas Swan, the cardinal’s …’ Swan paused. He smiled. ‘The cardinal’s messenger. He will want to see me immediately, I promise you. Come with me if you like.’

  The priest bowed stiffly. ‘You are covered in dust, messire. Could you not clean yourself …’

  ‘No,’ Swan said. He turned and continued up the steps.

  ‘I must insist,’ the priest said.

  Swan didn’t pause. ‘No,’ he repeated. He went up the broad stairs, and the priest ran behind him, his sandals slapping on the marble.

  ‘You cannot go to see the cardinal like that!’ he said, louder. ‘Stop, whoever you are, you are under my command. I order you …’

  Swan turned. He didn’t have the energy to outrun the priest. ‘Be kind to an old soldier, Father. Let me see Bessarion, and watch what happens. I promise you will be rewarded.’

  ‘No. No common courier speaks to me this way. You must learn manners, whoever you are. Back to the stable, clean yourself, and return after mass, and we will discuss this again.’ He put his hands on his hips – a strange posture for a man of the cloth.

  Swan took a slow breath. Then he called, in a very loud voice, ‘Most Holy Bessarion!’ in Greek.

  The priest stared, horrified. ‘He is working!’ he hissed.

  Swan crossed his arms and waited.

  Bessarion appeared at the door of his study, framed in the window that had been smashed during the election and magnificently replaced. ‘Is that …’ the cardinal asked.

  The priest bent his knee. ‘Eminence, this … this soldier has pushed in, and …’ He stopped speaking as the Greek cardinal brushed past hum and embraced the filthy Englishman.

  ‘You?’ Bessarion said.

  Swan went to one knee. He reached into the satchel that hung by his sword hilt and withdrew two heavy, folded, sealed parchments. ‘This from Carvajal, for you,’ he said. ‘This other, for the Holy Father.’

  Bessarion took them, b
ut his eyes never left Swan’s. ‘But?’

  ‘Yes,’ Swan said.

  ‘Belgrade?’ Bessarion asked.

  Swan smiled, because until that moment it was possible someone had beaten him to Rome. ‘Victory,’ he said.

  Bessarion went straight to his knees, and prayed briefly, in Greek, hands outstretched. He rose more slowly, but he appeared five years younger. ‘We must go straight to the Pope,’ he said. ‘Father Cordoba, it is excellent you are at hand. Run to the Vatican …’ He paused. ‘No. We will not announce ourselves.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Come, Tommaso. Or Ser Tommaso, as I must call you now. A knight of Saint Mark? I will never be able to afford you again.’ He was grinning. Bessarion was grinning. Swan had never seen him grin.

  They started down the broad steps together, and then Bessarion turned. ‘Cordoba, this is Ser Thomas Swan, a knight in my service. He has, of course, the right of entry at any time.’ He smiled benignly.

  Swan’s policy of live and let live survived the encounter, and he bowed to the priest. And then ran to follow the cardinal, who was calling for a mule.

  Ten minutes later they were in the Castle of Sant’Angelo, pushing through a crowd of courtiers waiting for appointments. Swan was still covered with the dust of the marches, and Bessarion was wearing the ancient cassock he wore to write in his own house. Dmitri and Kendal were behind them, carrying between them a large leather bag that seemed not to weigh anything – each carried it one handed.

  At four consecutive gates, Bessarion merely smiled at the guards and waved. But at the ultimate portal, the papal chamberlain intercepted them.

  ‘The Holy Father cannot be interrupted,’ he said.

  Bessarion nodded. ‘He will want to know immediately,’ he said.

  The papal chamberlain was cut from the same cloth as Father Cordoba, and said, ‘I hear that ten times a day.’

  Bessarion shrugged. ‘Not from me, you don’t. I promise you, Julius. He will want to hear this immediately.’

  ‘Tell me,’ the chamberlain demanded. ‘I will tell him.’

  Bessarion raised an eyebrow. ‘What is the Holy Father doing just now, Julius? Canonisation hearings?’

  The chamberlain’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘He will want to know this immediately.’ Bessarion smiled, and spread his hands, and the chamberlain looked the wrong way, and Swan, taking his cue, walked past him as if he and Bessarion practised the trick every day. When the chamberlain turned to remonstrate with the cardinal, Dmitri and Kendal pushed past him with the bag, and when he tried to follow them, Bessarion cut past him from the other side, and then they were in the magnificent corridor that led to the inner apartments.

  Swan had no trouble guessing in which chamber the Pope had to be. There was one chamber with guards, and the sounds of oratory – long declamations in an official voice.

  The guards were mere decoration. They had never been called on to actually confront anyone, and Swan smiled at them and froze them in place even as the chamberlain called for them to stop him. He was between them before they could prevent it.

  A dozen men in rich clerical robes sitting on big wooden chairs turned and looked. He was in a long, narrow room with a magnificent window at one end and a throne at the other and a long table between them. Callixtus III, Alfons de Borgia, sat on the throne.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked in his Spanish-accented Italian.

  Swan walked boldly to the foot of the throne and knelt. He nodded to Dmitri, who reached into the leather bag and gave a sharp pull. Kendal caught the other edge and shook it, and a cascade of green silk shot forward like a magnificent carpet and floated down to lie at the Pope’s feet, a carpet with a great silver embroidered sword and a verse of Holy Koran worked in golden thread across the whole of it in letters so fine and so close that the green silk was almost impossible to see except at the edges.

  Callixtus III put his hand to his mouth. Slowly, he rose to his feet.

  He looked, not at Swan, but at Bessarion. ‘Does this mean …’ he asked, and stopped, as if afraid to ask more.

  Bessarion’s grin told the whole story. But he pointed at Swan.

  Swan raised his eyes to the Pope’s. ‘Victory at Belgrade, Holy Father,’ he said. ‘The Sultan’s army was smashed. He has lost all his artillery, all his infantry, and even now the Wallachians hunt his cavalry in northern Greece.’

  ‘And you?’ Callixtus asked.

  ‘Holy Father, I was there, with Hunyadi.’ Swan almost choked on uttering the words.

  ‘Ser Tommaso Swan, an Englishman, Holy Father,’ Bessarion said quietly. ‘We have spoken of him. This is a countryman of mine, Dmitris Dukas, and another English crusader, William Kendal.’

  ‘Tell me everything. Stools for these very welcome guests. This meeting is adjourned, my friends. The Rose can wait another day for us. Belgrade is saved?’ He knelt, very slowly, and prayed. And then he sat back on his throne.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ he repeated.

  The Pope ordered every church bell in Europe to ring. Swan felt as if he could hear them all.

  For days, every senior lord of the Church demanded that Swan tell him everything, and Swan told the bare bones of the victory so many times that he could rattle it off in his sleep. He had a complete monopoly on his tale; there were no other Italians who had been there. In fact, there was no other news, so that one of the French cardinals took to openly doubting the truth of the Hungarian victory.

  But when he’d written it all out for the cardinal; when Carvajal’s dispatches were read and digested, and Hunyadi’s letter arrived the same day as Capistrano’s to demand credit for the victory; when the Curia began to squabble about the result, Swan went, cleaner, and sober, to Bessarion’s study, and knelt.

  ‘Eminence,’ he said, ‘I should like a few days of leave. Perhaps … two weeks.’

  And the cardinal nodded. ‘Take a month!’ he said. ‘But please return. With Messire Bembo married and a great lord in Venice, I depend on you.’ He tugged on his own beard. ‘Where is your company of lances?’ he asked. His mildness was itself suspicious.

  Swan nodded. ‘Ever your company, Eminence,’ he said. ‘I left them at Belgrade. The voivode offered to cover their costs – that is, to pay them, until the Turks were pursued and beaten. I did not know whether you might,’ Swan bowed, ‘care to dispense with them altogether, or whether you, ahem, had a further use.’ Swan bowed again. ‘They are very expensive, Eminence.’

  ‘You would not want to return to them?’ Bessarion asked.

  Swan sighed. ‘I would,’ he admitted.

  ‘The Holy Father has it in mind to send our little army to the support of Skanderberg,’ he said. ‘And the papal fleet is already at sea.’ He leaned forward. ‘You know these men that Venice uses to manage soldiers. They call them the proveditores,’ he said.

  Swan thought of Loredan. He had avoided Venice; indeed, he’d shipped from Dalmatia and crossed to Ancona on purpose. He loved Venice, but he had not wanted the victory known there before it was known in Rome. ‘Yes, Eminence,’ he said. ‘I know the proveditores. The eyes and ears of the Senate and Council of Ten.’

  ‘The Holy Father has it in mind to send you out as his proveditore,’ he said. ‘To watch how the papal money is spent against the Turks and provide accurate reports, and to guide the commanders on the spot. Swan, you look less than perfectly enthusiastic. It would involve, I promise you, excellent pay. A title, I suspect.’

  Swan looked at the floor. ‘I had thought to return to … that is, Eminence, I assumed I would …’ Swan, not usually at a loss for words, struggled to find words to describe what he had expected. ‘I thought I would provide you with the services Alessandro provided.’

  As soon as he said the words, he thought of the relationship the two men had probably had, and he blushed.

  The cardinal sat back and laughed. ‘You, my young friend, are now a knight of Saint Mark. A famous crusader. And, if I understand correctly, you wounded th
e Sultan in hand-to-hand combat.’

  Swan looked away.

  Bessarion nodded. ‘Frankly, my young scapegrace, everyone knows you. You could no more gather intelligence in Rome than the King of France or the Pope himself.’ He looked at a document on his desk. ‘I am not lacking in informers, Ser Tommaso, and I am reliably informed that you would like to take leave to see if perhaps a young woman will marry you.’

  Swan’s blush remained. ‘Yes, Eminence.’

  Bessarion smiled. ‘I promise you that the proveditore of the Holy Father would receive a nice title, a little plot of land in the marches around Bologna, and perhaps even a house. The sort of house where a nobly born lady might live. And I beg you, Messer Swan …’ Bessarion’s mirth almost overcame him. ‘You cannot hide her in your room.’

  Swan rose without leave and went to the study window that looked out over the yard. ‘I would be leaving you,’ he said.

  Bessarion waved a hand. ‘Not for long,’ he said quietly. ‘I will say no more.’

  Swan stared out of the window. ‘I would like to go back to England,’ he said.

  Bessarion raised an eyebrow. ‘I have a letter on my desk from your Earl of Warwick. Do you know him?’

  Swan frowned. ‘No. Yes. It must be Richard Neville. I know of him. We didn’t move in …’ Swan smiled and spread his hands. ‘In the same circles.’

  Bessarion only nodded. ‘Eventually there will be an embassy to England to raise men and money for the crusade,’ he said. ‘I will see to it you command the escort. In the meantime, the Pope has paid for a fleet and it is lying at Naples. It will, at least, go to Rhodes, and perhaps it will save the Gattelusi. Mytilene is under siege by the Turks. The Pope believes this is the hour to strike – that the victory at Belgrade will give us a chance.’ He met Swan’s eye, and held out a sealed parchment. ‘I need a letter taken to Milan, where I believe your young lady is, just now. And another to Venice, after Milan. Where I suspect you have friends.’ Bessarion smiled. ‘The Holy Father could spare you perhaps a week in Venice, or a little more. It will take the Venetians that long to put their ships in the water. And then,’ he said, ‘we would need you to board the ships and go to meet the papal fleet, armed with this letter, this appointment, and this grant of a title of nobility.’ Bessarion laid the documents one by one on the table he used as a desk. ‘Please, my boy. I am too old, and far too important to be told no. Just say yes, and you can be in Milan in two days.’