Tom Swan and the Head of St George: Part Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Swan’s hand lingered near the bronze bust. ‘May I?’ he asked. ‘I would not choose the spearhead, although I purchased it for my own lord.’

  Malatesta barked a laugh. ‘But it is genuine?’ he asked.

  Swan bowed. ‘Of course, illustrious lord. It is Greek, from before the time of the Persian War, if I understand correctly.’

  Malatesta picked it up and hefted it. ‘A very good weight. Do you fight?’ he asked.

  Swan bowed his head.

  Malatesta barked again. ‘Bah – I’m out of sorts, messire. Of course you fight – you’re the hero of the fight at Chios, are you not? I meant no foolishness.’ He growled. ‘I mean only – this is a good fighting weapon, for all it is bronze, yes?’

  Swan nodded enthusiastically. ‘My lord has the right of it, of course,’ he agreed.

  ‘But you prefer the bust?’ the Lord of Rimini asked.

  Swan pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can find you a hundred spearheads, but a bust of Poseidon in bronze? It is the finest I have seen.’

  It was indeed a fine bust, but Swan had found that, next to praising a man’s children, praising his collection of antiquities was a fine form of flattery and one that almost never gave offence.

  The Wolf smiled politely. ‘I think you wish to flatter me. Tell me, do you ever accept commissions from others than your eminent patron?’ he asked.

  Swan bowed. ‘I am your illustrious lordship’s humble servant, and would be delighted to—’

  ‘Christ on the cross, do you always speak this way?’ Malatesta asked. ‘You sound craven – like the braying of an ass.’

  Swan’s choices were limited to taking offence from Rome’s most dangerous man, or being amused.

  He laughed.

  ‘How would you like me to speak?’ he asked.

  Malatesta’s eyes sparkled. ‘Speak as you will. If you were to let go of the words “my illustrious lord”, I suspect we’d both get through this more quickly.’

  Swan nodded. ‘My … that is, er …’ He smiled. ‘Sir, I am looking for my capitano, Messire di Bracchio.’

  ‘Which is to say, Messire Bembo, of the Venetian Bembii.’ Malatesta smiled. His mouth seemed to have too many teeth, and Swan almost recoiled.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

  Malatesta nodded. ‘You yourself were married – pretended to be married – to the magnificent Violetta,’ he went on. ‘You have just returned from Vienna. You see, I am well informed on most matters.’

  Swan flushed. ‘Very well informed, illustrious lord,’ he said.

  ‘I mention this because I have a great many enemies, Messire Suane. I make an effort to be well served in the matter of information. For which I pay well.’ He looked at Swan.

  Swan wondered whether he was in the presence of a madman. ‘My lord – I came … that is, I visited myself upon you looking for Capitano di Bracchio …’

  Malatesta nodded. ‘He was here. I let him out the wicket. He was canvassing.’

  Swan’s face, despite his best efforts, must have shown his confusion.

  ‘Looking for supporters – and soldiers. It’s an election! But you are English, and know mercifully little of Rome when a Pope is chosen. Bribes, fornication, violence, arson – there is nothing to which a man may not turn to make himself Holy Father. Your master might have been Pope, but he would not stoop far enough. He received eight votes in the first ballot. But he will not win.’

  Swan tried to listen to the Wolf, but just as the curio cabinet had stolen his attention, so, now, it was taken from him again. A young woman entered from the back of the hall. She was decorously dressed in green and white, with a heavy gown all covered in green silk embroidery over a green kirtle. She had blond hair of a dazzling colour, like the glitter of a gold coin rendered to life, and her skin was as pale as ivory except that her cheeks were flushed. She was tall, for a woman, and her neck and throat were magnificent and gave a hint of the muscled beauty beneath the gown. Her head was high, her back straight, and she was elegant in her movements where another young woman might have been coltish.

  But her eyes – when they met Swan’s they met them boldly, and even across ten paces they burned with star-fire.

  ‘I can send you where he may be,’ the Wolf said. ‘Unless you’d rather stay here and devour my daughter with your eyes.’

  Swan’s spine tingled and he all but stood to attention. ‘My lord,’ he began.

  Malatesta’s thin-lipped smile went with his narrowed eyes. If he had had fangs, they would have showed.

  Swan swept a bow that included the distant daughter. ‘My lord, I can only apologise – but like the bust in the curio cabinet—’

  Malatesta shook his head. ‘Spare us more empty compliments, messire. My secretary will tell you where you may find your capitano.’

  Swan sighed inaudibly. ‘I am at my lord’s service in the matter of antiquities,’ he said quietly.

  The Lord of Rimini turned his head to the side and met Swan’s eye. ‘I may hold you to that. Do you hunt?’

  Swan longed to scratch his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My lord.’

  ‘Hawk?’ Malatesta asked.

  An image of Khatun and Auntie with hawks on their wrists flashed suddenly through his mind. And then Khatun’s body – her ivory-coloured flesh – and without meaning to, he glanced at the young woman.

  Malatesta growled.

  Swan bowed. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm,’ Malatesta said. ‘My secretary has what you seek. You may go.’

  Swan bowed – again – and withdrew down the room. The equerry guided him to a small room where three clerks sat writing at the direction of the lord’s secretary. The great man himself sat on a low dais, and was dressed in black. His linens were so white that they almost glowed. He was old – almost fifty. He was sealing his way through a stack of completed letters and commands.

  ‘Savaged by the master, eh?’ he said.

  Swan stood silently. All he wanted was to get away from the palace of the Wolf.

  ‘Here – I’ve written the directions. It is a tavern by the river.’ The secretary looked up. ‘May I give you a word of advice, young man?’

  Swan inclined his head.

  The man smiled thinly. ‘Avoid the Demoiselle Iso as if she carried the plague,’ he said. ‘She may choose not to avoid you.’ He nodded affably. ‘People die,’ he added. ‘Messire Alessandro is an old and true friend of this house and can perhaps explain. Be wary in the streets – I gather this is your first papal election?’

  The equerry led him into the yard. A chair – with eight porters – was waiting by the hall door, and even as Swan left the office wing, the Demoiselle Iso swept down the steps. But she looked about her and spotted Swan. She flashed him a smile, and he responded before he had given the matter much thought.

  He crossed the yard with the silent equerry and entered the tunnel to the main gate just as the lady’s closed chair came into the tunnel. Swan stood aside against the damp stones.

  ‘Stop!’ ordered an imperious voice. The chairmen halted. A window opened in the chair’s box, and Demoiselle Iso’s beautiful face appeared, perfectly framed. ‘What is your name, Cavaliere?’ the demoiselle asked.

  Swan bowed despite the filth on the cobbles. ‘I am called Tommaso, my lady. Tommaso Swan.’

  She smiled, and her lips and teeth seemed to illuminate the tunnel. ‘A pleasure, messire.’ The window closed, and the voice said, ‘Walk on!’

  The equerry frowned. ‘She’s trouble,’ he whispered.

  Swan nodded.

  Two streets south of the Malatesta fortress, Swan found two dead men. Both had been stabbed repeatedly, and both had been stripped of weapons – and purses. They were wearing the remnants of Collona red and yellow colours.

  Swan looked around carefully. But there was no point in asking anyone anything. Romans had mastered the art of never seeing a killing.

  He pulled his short cloak closer about him and head
ed towards the tavern. The rain was coming down harder and the streets were awash. His good boots began to soak through and he cursed the weather, the election and his master’s failure to leave forwarding instructions.

  The tavern was a four-storey building in three wings and a barn around a central courtyard. It had been built a century before to house pilgrims, and its outside wooden balcony and the line of wooden shields bearing coats of arms served to make it look as if it had been transplanted from the Tyrol, through whose winter valleys Swan had passed just the week before. The tavern was as busy as the streets were silent, and men were crowding the door, so that Swan had to force a passage, beaming in all directions to show goodwill and clutching his sword to his chest to avoid dragging it across other men’s shins.

  Inside was chaos. The inn had a dozen big tables, and every one of them was crowded. It took Swan a moment to take it in – but it was obvious as soon as he looked that all of Cardinal Bessarion’s staff were here, working from an inn. Father Simon, who had replaced the French priest as the household’s majordomo, sat at one table, and Alessandro sat at another, both served by clerks who sat with them, every one with pen in hand, every pen scribbling furiously.

  It appeared that Father Simon was distributing money. It appeared that Alessandro was collecting information.

  Di Bracchio looked up, caught Swan’s eye, and grinned. He bounced to his feet and shoved through the press to put his arms around Swan. ‘The prodigal returns!’ he shouted over the tumult. ‘I’ve needed you for days!’

  At his shoulder was Cesare di Brescia. The notary and occasional man-at-arms had on a breastplate, and he pressed it against Swan when it was his turn. ‘We didn’t expect you for a week!’

  Swan experienced that wave of relief that parents know when a child has been missing and is found. Before he entered the inn, he had been prepared to be angry with Di Bracchio and even with the cardinal – now, in his relief at finding his household, he was all smiles.

  ‘I had some trouble finding you,’ he said.

  Alessandro made a face and then slapped his forehead theatrically. ‘Christ on the cross!’ he swore. ‘How did you find us?’

  ‘I asked at Malatesta’s,’ Swan said.

  Alessandro winced. ‘Oh – of course. Was he in a good humour?’

  Swan frowned. ‘Not particularly,’ he said.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘I need another twenty men-at-arms from him.’ He paused. ‘Are you ready to work?’

  ‘Messire, I’m nearly dead on my feet and I have important news for His Eminence.’ Swan grimaced. ‘We rode as if the devil pursued us over the Alps, Alessandro. Peter can barely walk …’

  ‘Tell me your news and I’ll try and get it in to him,’ Alessandro said.

  Swan leaned close. ‘Mehmet is marching for Belgrade,’ he said. ‘The Emperor has agreed to the subsidy, but will do nothing to help the King of Hungary.’

  Alessandro laughed. ‘Fuck them all, the fools. When Mehmet is at the gates of Vienna, what will the Emperor do then?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I’ve had a winter of it. Hungary and the imperial diet and the fool of a legate. And now I understand the Pope is dead.’

  Men were pressing in, trying to get Alessandro’s attention. ‘It’s worse than you think,’ he said. ‘Run some errands for me, and I’ll tell you what I know later.’

  Swan bowed – not very deeply, as he had men pressed against him from all directions.

  Father Simon wrote him out a list of errands – all errands with bags of gold attached. Each errand was directed to a religious house, and Swan left the little bags with the various gatekeepers.

  At the Carmelite house, a disapproving monk in severe brown took the gold and spat, ‘Who are you from, then?’

  Swan was separated from the other man by a thick oak door and a narrow wicket. ‘I represent Cardinal Bessarion,’ he said.

  The Carmelite friar shook his head. ‘Tell the cardinal to save his money for the poor,’ he said. ‘That’s where this is going.’

  Other men took the money with varying degrees of obsequious greed. The convent of the Poor Clares sent him along to the abbess, who gave him a cup of warmed wine and made much of his donat’s ring.

  ‘You must be very brave, to serve the Order against the Turks. I hear they are quite terrible,’ the abbess said. She smiled. Her habit was rich, and well embroidered, and the cross she wore at her throat would have kept fifty poor men for a week.

  Swan thought briefly of the sounds of the Turks when they charged. ‘They can be terrible enemies,’ he said. ‘But for the most part they are men like other men.’

  ‘Surely not?’ the abbess said. ‘One hears such tales of rape and murder. Surely they are the merest animals?’

  Swan frowned. ‘Their soldiers are very well disciplined,’ he said. ‘And they are very religious.’

  Now the abbess frowned. ‘I do not see how any idolator can be called religious. They are Satan worshippers, are they not?’

  Swan decided that he was not responsible for her education. He drank up his wine. He was aware that she was not pleased with him. At the wicket, she said, ‘I think your views on the Turks most original. Does the Bailiff of Rome know?’

  ‘No,’ Swan acknowledged. ‘No, madame. I do not believe he does, as he has never, to my certain knowledge, hazarded his skin against the Turks or any other enemy.’

  She put a hand to her chest. ‘You are a most singular person, messire. I saw a Turk just the other day – his eyes burned like coals, and he was waiting on his master, one of the archbishops.’

  Swan bowed, aware that annoying the abbess was not helping his master to become Pope. ‘I can be singular,’ he admitted. ‘But it is true – their eyes burn red. The Turks. Imps of Satan, every one.’

  She smiled. ‘Ah – so you only spoke so to try my faith? You’ll find no tinge of heresy in this house!’

  Swan smiled, cringing inwardly. ‘I would not imagine so,’ he said.

  Leaving the nunnery, he slipped into an alley to avoid a party of Orsini toughs, all sporting their red and white and all armed with swords and daggers. A few had partisans or halberds.

  With a pair of beggars who were skulking in the alley, Swan watched them go by. He gave each of them a silver solido.

  ‘Fucking cold, ain’t it?’ said the first. ‘An’ many thanks, master.’

  Swan was crouched down, hat clutched in his gloved hand, eyes just over the lid of a rain barrel. There was a dead rat, its tiny fangs glinting in the wintery sun, behind the barrel, and it stank.

  ‘You Collona family, then?’ asked the second man.

  Swan favoured him with a smile. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘He’s not even a Roman, are you, my dear?’ said the first. ‘I’m a citizen, I am.’

  ‘Like fuck you are,’ said the second. ‘You lie like a fucking rug.’

  The first drew himself up in drunken outraged innocence. ‘My father was a citizen,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t even know who your father was, you wine-soaked impostor.’ The second beggar was more sober and wetter, not having the benefit of the small overhang that sheltered the first. ‘Eh, patrone, you know this alley has another means of egress up the steps, eh? When the boys come to the nunnery to do their business, they come up that way.’ He grinned, revealing the most hideous mouth of gap and snaggle teeth Swan had ever seen. ‘That worth any money, master?’

  Swan left them richer by all his spare change and went up the slimy stone steps. They stank of cat’s piss and men’s piss, too. He passed along the back of the nunnery at the level of the second-floor windows and found himself looking into the dormitory of the novices. The earthen path along the top of an old courtyard gave into the back of an abandoned house – Rome was full of them. Swan bent low and passed under the level of the windows while a man – a pimp – yelled imprecations at one of his girls. Swan knew he was working himself up to beat her, and briefly he considered involvement.

  But
only briefly, and he passed the house and vaulted the old wall into the street. He saw St John Lateran and the aqueduct from the top of the wall, got his bearings, and used the process of rearranging his sword belt and rehanging his short cloak to look forward and back before strolling into the early evening.

  He had the streets all to himself back to the tavern by the river. The common room was still crowded with men, but Alessandro sat alone, and Father Simone was asleep in two chairs.

  Swan pulled up a stool and sat by Di Bracchio, who clapped him on the back. ‘You lived.’

  ‘The streets are crawling with Orsini,’ Swan said. ‘I found a pair of Collona they knifed, earlier today.’

  ‘Elections always bring out the family wars,’ Di Bracchio said. ‘Everyone has men-at-arms out. There’s money for votes, and money for violence.’ He shrugged eloquently. ‘The truth is that all these little tyrants and petty despots think that, with the death of the Pope, there is no law. We do these things better in Venice.’

  Swan waved a hand airly over the room. ‘Are we winning? Malatesta thought the cardinal was out.’

  Di Bracchio nodded. The common room was dark, lit only by a dozen tapers in wall sconces, and Di Bracchio’s dark clothing made him fade into the wood panelling. Only his nose, the whites of his eyes and his teeth really showed. ‘Malatesta would know, the man-whore,’ Di Bracchio said. ‘His spies are the best in Rome.’

  Swan was startled. ‘So we are losing?’

  Di Bracchio shrugged. ‘Bessarion will not do anything to ensure victory. Father Simone and I are making payments to all the usual causes, but that is on our own heads. Bessarion – Christ, I love him, but he is the merest innocent. He sits and writes speeches, as though the cardinals of Avignon will be persuaded by logic.’ Alessandro took a long drink of wine. ‘I think what I love best about him is this – uprightness. And yet – bah. We could have been Pope.’

  ‘We?’ Swan asked.

  Di Bracchio laughed.

  ‘So who – the French?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Well, it won’t be an Englishman!’ Di Bracchio said. ‘Let us hope it is not a Frenchman, either. At this point I’d take a Spaniard. Christ.’ He drank off the rest of his wine. ‘I’m drunk and I have a hangover.’