Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Two: Venice tsathosg-2

by Christian Cameron

  Messer Siciliano shrugged. ‘What can I do?’ he said, as if he were the oppressed party. ‘And you cannot tell me the young scapegrace needed the clothes.’

  The Englishman bowed. ‘I would like a suit of clothes. In fact, I would like two or even three suits of clothes. I would like them, if this is possible, in the Florentine style. I would also like that fine leather arming doublet with all the lacing points for armour.’

  ‘Florentine?’ snorted Giovanni. ‘Don’t be foolish. This is Roma. We don’t show our parts like Florentines, and we wear sober colours.’

  ‘I’m sure you do!’ Swan said.

  Siciliano nodded. He went through the shirts, holding them up to his customer. He was quick. ‘No. No. Too much blackwork and the fabric is too light – good for a sodomite, not for you. No. Ah! Look at this. Mice teeth on the cuffs – superb work.’ He tossed Swan a linen shirt. Then he continued down the pile. ‘No. No. Oh, no. Too small. Made for a giant. Made for a humpback. Ah! Try this.’

  It took an hour, and Giovanni was a great help, although it became increasingly clear that his tastes were very different from the Englishman’s. Besides the arming doublet, which Swan desired with all his soul, he got two doublets of wool – one scarlet, one black. He got two pairs of black hose that didn’t fit very well, and one pair of scarlet hose that fitted perfectly, as if made for him. He bought one pair of braes and two shirts.

  ‘You’ll want more linen,’ Giovanni said.

  The Englishman nodded. ‘And I’ll buy it new. I’m not fussy, but I’m tired of wearing other men’s linens.’

  Giovanni nodded. ‘I know a girl,’ he said. ‘She sews neatly and she’s fast.’

  ‘You can take the scarlet,’ Siciliano said. ‘The black and the spares need a little tailoring. I can have them for you tomorrow – the day after for sure.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘In florins?’

  ‘Tell me in ducats.’

  ‘Ah? Venetian? In gold?’ asked the tailor.

  ‘Is there another kind?’ Swan muttered. He knew this process, too. The shopkeeper was making time while calculating.

  ‘Twenty ducats.’

  ‘Ricardo!’ Giovanni said. ‘For a friend!’

  Siciliano pointed at the pile. ‘The arming doublet is worth half that by itself. The scarlet stuff was ten ducats a yard, new. The doublet has one small hole and no stains and is, if I may say so, beautifully made and fits like a glove. Eighteen.’

  ‘The arming doublet has a triangular hole under one arm where it failed its last wearer and a corresponding stain where his fluids rushed out,’ Swan pointed out. ‘The scarlet is excellent, and I’m at least the third owner. There’s a long strain mark in the wool from the last owner, and a fitting mark where it was recut from another garment.’ He sniffed. ‘And it smells of spikenard.’ He paused. ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘You bargain well for a foreigner,’ said Siciliano. ‘Don’t you need to be cutting throats or tupping sullied virgins? Isn’t fleecing a poor shop-owner beneath you? Seventeen.’

  Swan met his eye and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I love to haggle. Fifteen and a half.’

  ‘Fuck your mother, you waste my time. You are insulting my shop – and I did extra work for you, you sodomite! Give me back my clothes.’ The Roman reached out and tried to seize the bundle.

  Swan held it out of his line of motion. ‘You forgot to add, sixteen and a half.’

  Siciliano stopped, slapped his thigh and laughed. The laugh transformed his face – suddenly he didn’t look so old. ‘Bah! Sixteen.’

  Swan counted down the coins, then stepped into the darkness behind the sixth table to change.

  Giovanni called, ‘It’s all clean! He washes everything.’

  ‘I do not!’ Siciliano shouted. ‘My wife does.’

  Swan came out, lacing his scarlet hose to his scarlet doublet. The shirt felt wonderful. Clean braes felt like heaven.

  ‘There’s a cloak that went with that suit,’ Siciliano said.

  Now it was Swan’s turn to laugh. ‘Of course there was. I imagine it fits me as well as the rest.’

  With a flourish, the Roman tailor produced it.

  He hung it on the Englishman’s shoulders.

  Swan looked down and saw that a whole corner was missing. He looked at the owner, who frowned.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It took some sword-cuts.’

  In fact, it had three long cuts, carefully resewn with good scarlet thread, but still, in bright sunlight, a little . . . visible.

  ‘Two ducats,’ Siciliano said.

  Swan rolled his eyes and handed over one more.

  ‘I knew you two would get along,’ Giovanni said as they walked on.

  Evening mass was a major production at any church in Rome, but Giovanni led him to the former temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where the dome rose away in a magnificent sweep that engaged the young Englishman through the whole service. In the portico, they found Cesare just bowing deeply to a beautiful woman in a crimson gown with two blond slaves carrying her train. Giovanni swept a bow and Swan matched his bow.

  Cesare reached his whole hand into the holy water font by the centre door and then extended his hand, dripping, towards the woman, who reached out and touched it with the slightest, the very slightest, of nods. She crossed herself, and swept by, dropping a veil of Bruges lace over her face.

  ‘You are a bold lecher,’ Giovanni hissed to his friend.

  Cesare laughed. ‘You only live the one time,’ he said.

  ‘Cardinal Orsini’s whore,’ Giovanni said over his shoulder.

  Giovanni had made a serious mistake. He thought that the Englishman was still at his left shoulder, but Swan had been separated in the push of the crowd as the woman passed them, and his comment was delivered, not to Swan, but to a liveried retainer. A man in Orsini livery.

  The Orsini man’s fist lashed out, and Giovanni folded like a stool over the punch, a great whoof coming out of him. He fell, and another man in the Orsini red and yellow kicked him savagely.

  There was a scream from a woman in the crowd, and some excitement. Cesare caught a blow on his shoulder and slammed both fists together into one of Giovanni’s assailants, who went down as if hit with an axe.

  Swan saw the glint of a blade. He wasn’t wearing his sword. Few men did in Rome, at least before dark, and never to mass. But he had his knife.

  The red and yellow livery was suddenly everywhere. Cesare caught one of them up and threw him bodily into two more.

  The first tough who had hit Giovanni had a dagger in his fist. So did the man kicking him.

  The first man saw Swan put a hand on his dagger. He changed direction, came at the Englishman, and his left hand shot out and took Swan by the throat.

  Swan wrapped the offending arm with his own and broke the man’s arm in a lock. The snap of the bone was audible across the church. He twisted the broken arm and the man screamed.

  Swan let him go. He drew his knife and the second man backed away from Giovanni. They eyed each other for a long heartbeat, and then the Orsini man put his dagger away and bent to pick up the man with the broken arm.

  ‘I am Adolfo,’ he said. ‘You will be hearing from us. You work for that schismatic Greek, yes?’

  Swan smiled. ‘You serve that whore Orsini, yes?’

  Adolfo stiffened.

  ‘Best run away,’ Swan said. He was enjoying this.

  Cesare caught his arm. ‘Leave it alone. This is all a misunderstanding.’ He turned to Adolfo. ‘He’s a foreigner.’

  Adolfo’s eyes sparkled. He had his dagger out again, and the church was empty. Even the priests and acolytes were gone. ‘Even if he kissed my feet, I would not forgive him.’

  Perhaps it was the scarlet clothes. ‘It’s true, I misunderstood,’ Swan said. ‘My Italian is not so good. I did not mean that Cardinal Orsini was a whore. I mean you are a whore, you catamite bastard.’

  The Roman leaped.

  Swan didn’t move.<
br />
  His arm shot out, and there followed a series of blows so fast that the bystanders couldn’t follow them.

  Swan took a blow in the gut that wrenched him back against the temple wall. But the wall at his back steadied him, and he got a knee up in time to stop the blow to his groin. Then he and the Orsini thug had each other by the dagger wrists. The Roman was smaller than Swan, and Swan tried twice to head-butt the man—both blows were partly avoided, but the second gave him a fleeting advantage in balance.

  He threw his adversary over his extended hip—but the other man held onto his shoulders like a leech, and down they both went onto the hard marble floor. Swan lost track of the Orsini’s knife hand and flinched just as the man’s fist crashed into his temple.

  They rolled apart—the Roman had lost his knife and Swan, stunned, got to one knee. The Roman went for his knife. Swan hooked his leg. He traded balance for aggression—desperate—and fell heavily atop the man.

  The Orsini wasn’t moving.

  There was blood running out of his mouth.

  Swan looked at his dagger sticking out of the dying man’s guts. Giannis had his knife out. ‘Are you insane?’ he asked in a conversational tone.

  ‘He attacked Giovanni,’ Swan answered. He wiped his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. In truth, he wasn’t sure what had made him so high handed.

  ‘He drew first,’ Cesare said.

  The Orsini retainers were gathering. Cesare got an arm under Giovanni’s arm. ‘Can you move fast?’ he asked Swan.

  ‘By St. George,’ Swan answered. He spat some blood. And the four of them ran.

  Giovanni was in bad shape, and by the time they reached the palazzo, he was slumped between Swan and Cesare. He stopped in the courtyard to go to the jakes, and scared himself by pissing blood.

  ‘That bastard kicked him in the back, over and over,’ Swan said. He was bouncing with the spirit of the combat.

  ‘Giovanni said something very stupid,’ Cesare said wearily.

  Giannis shrugged. ‘Does this mean no dinner?’

  ‘The Orsinis will be out in every street,’ Cesare said.

  Giannis smiled and held his hands wide. ‘I’ll wear a sword, then,’ he said. He turned to Swan. ‘Are you insane?’ He clapped the younger man on the back. ‘It was beautiful. He never expected it. Hah! “I mean you are a whore, you catamite bastard.”’ He laughed a long, loud laugh. ‘Let me buy you dinner. You won’t live long, but you’ll be famous.’

  Dinner was uneventful and delicious. After dinner they walked to a certain house in the very richest portion of town. Groups of young men with torches went by, laughing and singing, and once they were crowded off the street by a big group, but none of the torches or the fops or the roving swordsmen were Orsinis.

  The sun had set, and the night was dark. Madonna Lucrescia’s house was an old palazzo, very much in the Gothic style of two hundred years before. But inside – it was a perfumed garden. The walls were decorated in paintings on stucco. The subjects were amorous – and very, very straightforward.

  Cesare smiled. ‘I’ve heard she allows the better artists a straightforward trade,’ he said.

  Giannis grinned. ‘If only I had such a talent.’

  The women who adorned the rooms appeared perfectly modest, if perhaps a little open. There was dancing, and men played at cards while women watched. A woman worked a loom in one room. In another two women played the lute while a third danced and a crowd of men watched.

  An African appeared at Swan’s elbow with a tray. On the tray were three glasses – fine Venetian glass.

  ‘What does this cost?’ Swan asked.

  ‘No one knows. No one knows from whence Madonna gets her fortune.’ Cesare shrugged. ‘Nothing in Rome is as it seems, my young friend. This woman – like our master – deals first and foremost in information.’

  ‘If the Orsini are so dangerous,’ Swan said. He paused. ‘Why the gallantry with the mistress?’

  Cesare smiled. ‘Because I am a large man nearly twice your age, you imagine I cannot be in love, or be gallant,’ he said.

  Swan had never imagined the Italian as a lover – or as a man of daring. He bowed. ‘I will endeavour to think differently of you, my friend.’

  ‘You are such a serious child,’ Cesare said. ‘In my youth, I was a poet, and I was going to be a second Dante. In middle age, I’m a notary for an out-of-favour cardinal in the Curia in Rome.’ The lawyer took a long drink of wine. ‘Let me tell you something about age, my young friend. When you are thirty-five, you still have the eighteen-year-old inside you. You are the same man – you just weigh more.’ He laughed. ‘But since Donna Esperanza is not immediately available to me, I will go and light my candle with one of these delicious young things. You know what we call this house?’

  Swan smiled. ‘No,’ he said. A stunning redhead was looking at him from under her lashes. His head knew her interest to be simulated, but his body reacted instantly to her lowered gaze.

  ‘We call it “The Well of Sanctity”,’ the Brescian said. ‘Because the whole Curia and every priest in Rome drinks here.’

  ‘Some call them the papal bankers,’ Giannis said. ‘Because the Curia come here to make their deposits.’

  Cesare laughed so hard he snorted wine. ‘I can remember when you could scarcely speak Italian, you rogue!’

  Giannis smiled modestly.

  A tall woman, older than the girls dancing but with the figure of a classical beauty, wearing a dark red gown of Venetian velvet and a fortune in pearls, paused by them. She didn’t bend over their table, but she performed what might have been called a courtesy. Swan rose from his seat, and bowed low. Giannis stood like a ramrod with his flat cap in both hands. Cesare didn’t get up – but he reached for her hand and caught it, and didn’t so much kiss it as breathe lightly on it.

  ‘Donna, you honour us too much,’ he said.

  ‘So much that you can’t get your arse off your chair, you fat peasant?’ the woman said. Her accent was charming – the educated Tuscan Italian that Swan was already learning was the sign of breeding. But her words were foul.

  Cesare grinned. ‘Not so fat as it could cover yours, Donna.’

  She threw back her head and laughed, and her laugh was as beautiful as her body.

  Just for a moment, she reminded Swan of Tilda. They were of an age – thirty-five, he guessed – quite ancient. And yet – both of them laughed loud in a way that young women seemed scared to do.

  She turned to Giannis. ‘Can you even afford to drink my wine, heretic?’

  Giannis nodded, clearly nervous.

  ‘Was your mother a tyrant, you poor man,’ she said, running a finger under his chin. ‘Do women terrify you?’ She laughed. ‘Come, I have a new German girl from the other side of the Alps. The two of you can be scared together. Come.’ She turned to Cesare. ‘He’s a hardened killer, is he not?’

  Cesare nodded, obviously filling his eyes with her. ‘Yes, Donna. A hard man. A soldier.’

  ‘And yet his hand is trembling even now.’ She turned her brilliant gaze – and her perfect teeth – on the Greek. She had his hand, held high, as if they were dancers in a pavane.

  When she had led him away, Swan was a trifle disappointed. She’d looked at him a dozen times – assessed him from the shoes on his feet to the hair curling atop his head. But not a word.

  Cesare read his mind. ‘Not for you, young man. She’d eat you. And take all your money.’ He laughed.

  ‘Who for, then?’

  ‘Rumour is she’s the darling of one of the Spanish cardinals and that he’s very jealous.’ Cesare shook his head. ‘Trust a Spaniard to love a whore and be jealous. A nation – no, a race – looking for a fight.’

  Swan watched her walk back towards them. She favoured him with a brilliant smile. He rose again from his seat, feeling very young.

  Cesare caught one of her hands. ‘I have something for you,’ he said.

  ‘Who is this boy? Surely he’s not old enough to hav
e hair on his parts.’ She leaned so close to Swan he thought she was going to kiss him. Then she moved away smoothly, and laughed.

  She looked at Cesare, who handed her a scroll.

  She blushed. ‘For me?’ she asked. ‘Oh, my heart. Someone give me a knife.’

  The redhead reached up – showing a wonderful length of leg – and drew a tiny knife from under her kirtle. She handed it to Donna with a bow, and Donna used it to open the seal on the parchment.

  She read, her colour high.

  Her chin rose – a hand twitched.

  ‘Cesare,’ she said. She snapped her fingers. ‘Come – I have something I need to show you.’

  Cesare bowed over her hand. ‘Always at your service,’ he said, and followed her.

  Swan watched him go, trying to be amused at her contempt for him – deeply resentful, really.

  ‘I’m called Maria,’ said the redhead. She made a nice courtesy. She raised an eyebrow. ‘He won’t be back.’

  Swan felt like the boy he’d just been called. ‘He – I – she—’ He shrugged.

  ‘Do you know any dances?’ she asked. ‘I love to dance.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t really know a great many dances,’ he said, and then, after a pause, he settled on complete honesty. ‘I know the May dance, as we dance it in London. That’s all. In London, while girls dance, men learn to fight.’

  She smiled. ‘Would you like to learn?’

  He rose to his feet. ‘I would like it above all things,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Your Italian is very good, for a barbarian.’

  Later, after they had made love, he rolled over to her. ‘I have never done that – in a bed,’ he said. ‘It’s so – comfortable.’

  She laughed, and hit him with a pillow.

  He tried to fight her off and found her astonishingly strong – and fast. And agile.

  When he finally pinned her arms – after some tickling – he leaned over her. ‘You would make a superb swordsman. Woman.’ He kissed her.

  She used the kiss to get a hand free and thrust a knee between his legs and rolled them both over. ‘Teach me,’ she breathed at him. Her hair was all around him, and her breasts trailed across the top of his chest.