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

by Christian Cameron

  Balthazar stood there dressed, not as a Jew, but as a gentleman, in a short cloak. And wearing a sword. He bowed, gloves on heart. ‘My thanks for sparing my son,’ he said.

  That marked the end of the afternoon. Solomon embraced him. ‘I told Father you’d do it,’ he said. ‘That was . . . amazing. Promise me we’ll do it again?’

  Swan smiled. ‘I wish all my friends were so easily satisfied.’

  In the gateway, Balthazar held out a purse. ‘I hope that this is enough,’ he said.

  Swan shook his head. ‘You must be . . . messire, I did that for friendship.’

  The Jew looked as if he’d been struck. He stepped back.

  Swan shook his head. ‘Damn it, I mean no offence!’

  There was a long pause – too long. Then the other man stepped forward again. ‘My package is at your lodging,’ he said. ‘I hope that all goes well for you in Constantinople. Your Orsini problem is – hmmm. Very close to you.’ He bowed. ‘I am . . . honoured that you have chosen to befriend my son.’ He turned in a swirl of his cloak and vanished into the ghetto.

  Swan walked carefully down to the wharf, but he didn’t see Black Doublet or anyone else he recognised. It was dark by the time his boat left him at the entrance to the canal nearest his lodging.

  He knew the old whore who stood under the overhang of the last warehouse by the water. It was her turf – possibly her home. She had hennaed red hair and white face paint two days old, and was possibly as old as forty. He bowed.

  She nodded. ‘There’s a man,’ she whispered.

  His shoulders tensed, and ice ran down his back. Your Orsini are very close, Balthazar had said.

  ‘Ah, Madonna, not tonight,’ he said with a bow, and put a silver coin in her hand.

  ‘By the church,’ she said. ‘Joanna said to tell you.’

  He walked on. He felt as if he was being watched – felt naked. And the darkness seemed to hide a legion of enemies.

  At the next cross-alley, he turned and walked north, jumping over a dead dog and a steaming pile of fresh human excrement just dropped from a chamber pot. The alley was so narrow that his hips brushed buildings on both sides, and he was completely blind for seconds at a time. If they took him here . . .

  He emerged in the tiny square behind the church – the nearest building had a triangular floor plan because of the limitations of the two alleys, merging, and the square itself was only six paces across – the width of the small church of St Peter, the neighbourhood shrine. He stayed in the shadows by the triangular building. He could hear voices.

  Men on the edge of violence have a sound to them. The sound alerted him. He stood listening, indecisive. Make for the inn where he lodged? But if they were assassins, they might come in and kill him – and Niccolo and Joanna.

  Here in the darkness, he had an element of surprise.

  And a sword. And room to use it.

  He drew his sword and laid the scabbard carefully on a garden wall where he could reclaim it if he lived. Then he moved cautiously. Because he’d gone out to give a fencing lesson, he had on light leather shoes, like dance shoes, and he blessed them. He was silent.

  He moved to the corner.

  He could see one man at the church corner. That man was leaning forward to talk quietly to another, whose voice came back hollowly, echoed by the next alley.

  He stood at the corner and listened.

  The man closest to him said something.

  The voice floated back.

  ‘I said, maybe he stayed with his Jews. Do you think he’s one of them? Some sort of sorcerer?’

  The disembodied voice came back.

  ‘Fuck your mother!’ said the man closest to him, and Swan started across the square. He had to be sure, so he caught his sword with his left hand at the midpoint – mezza spada – and ran light footed in on his opponent, who had leaned into the alley.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Swan used his sword the way a workman might use a pick. His sword-point rammed right thought the back of his skull, killing the man instantly. He fell, and his fall seemed very loud to Swan, who froze.

  It must have actually been loud, because he saw a shadow move at the far end of the alley.

  And then the man was on him.

  Swan retreated in a single leap – to get more light and more room to swing a sword. He was shocked at the man charging him, but only as shocked as the assassin was himself, to find himself facing a sword an ell long with a dagger.

  Now he stepped back into his alley.

  Something in his stance gave Swan an instant of warning. There was the scrape of leather on a cobblestone.

  A third man.

  Swan whirled and cut – on instinct. He missed, but the new assailant sprang back.

  With two men coming at him from widely divergent angles, Swan knew he had to attack one. The new man was closer.

  Swan cut back up the same line he’d cut down. He dropped his cloak, keeping hold of one of the bucklers inside. He stepped forward with his left foot and punched with the buckler, and caught the man’s dagger more by luck than skill, and his counter-cut took the man high on the dagger arm.

  He screamed.

  Swan punched him in the head with his buckler and the man crumpled, and Swan pivoted as Alessandro had taught him, on his hips, and got his buckler up. The third man stood for the count of three. And then he turned and ran.

  Swan let him go. Running through Venetian alleys in the dark seemed like a sure way to die – or merely ruin his clothes. He reached down and the man at his feet stabbed at him and he caught the stab on his arm. The buckler took some impact, but the man’s knife scored into the meat of his bicep, and the pain enraged him, and he cut viciously at the man with his sword – not once but three times.

  Then he shook his head and cursed himself for a fool.

  And then he took their purses. Searched their clothes. No one had called the watch – one scream and one clash of blades wasn’t enough to upset most Venetians.

  He picked up the first one and carried him a block, to the canal. And dropped him in.

  Walked back, picked up the second, and repeated the exercise.

  When he was done, his hands didn’t stop shaking. He almost couldn’t walk.

  There were two torches burning outside the inn, and if another man had tried to kill him, he’d have died. He didn’t take any precautions, but walked up to the door. Only when he saw Joanna did he fully appreciate how foolish he’d been.

  She looked around – Cesare and a group of other men were playing dice.

  ‘Come!’ she muttered fiercely. She dragged him into the kitchen. Then ran back and closed the front door.

  He sat on a settle by the fire and wondered if he would throw up.

  Then he looked down and saw the pool of blood on the stone floor under his feet.

  He came to to find his right arm wrapped tightly – perhaps too tightly. It was all pins and needles. Something was pressed against him.

  He moved his right hand and found that what was pressed against him was warm.

  ‘Ah,’ Joanna said. ‘You were cold.’

  She was naked.

  He found that he was, in fact, still alive.

  In the morning, he went to his room and found an oiled silk envelope that weighed two pounds. With it was a scroll tube sealed with a red seal in heavy wax.

  Swan took them both. He put the silk envelope into the wicker basket with his armour.

  He watched the basket and his heavy leather bag swayed up over the side of the state galley Nike, and down on to the deck before going down into the shallow hold under the rowers.

  ‘We’ll sail after matins,’ said the mate, a young Venetian aristocrat with a full beard. ‘Good to have a couple of knights aboard. Will you fight as marines if we have a scrap?’

  ‘Of course,’ Alessandro said. ‘Show us our stations.’ He turned to Swan. ‘I’m going to assume you were attacked,’ he said.

  ‘Not exactly,’
Swan answered.

  He told the story and Alessandro laughed his unpleasant laugh. ‘So – for all you know, you attacked an innocent man,’ he said.

  Swan shrugged.

  ‘I don’t think so, either,’ Alessandro said. ‘But next time, leave someone alive, eh, Barbarossa?’

  As Alessandro’s harness and arms were swayed aboard, Swan saw that he had a long sword, four feet of steel with a heavy cross-guard, a long hilt and a spiked pommel.

  Giannis had one, too.

  Giannis saw what he was looking at and leaned over. ‘In a ship fight, it is good to have reach and power,’ he said.

  Alessandro opened Swan’s basket. ‘Fine armour. Milanese. Does it fit?’

  ‘Well enough,’ Swan said. ‘Better than the stuff I wore at Castillon.’

  Swan had been to sea – twice – in great ships. A galley was a very different ride. He was close to the water, and it felt faster and more personal.

  As a ‘knight’ in the train of an ambassador, he rode in the captain’s luxurious ‘coach’ with eight other men – the bishop, his two priests, the captain, the mate, their two men-at-arms who were well-born Venetians training for the sea, and Alessandro.

  After one very uncomfortable night, Swan joined Giannis under the awning. The deck was as hard as rock, but the space to roll over was better than a feather bed. The third night, Peter showed them both how to rig a cloak as a ring for the hips, and Swan slept well.

  They put in almost every night after the first week at sea. They touched in Dalmatia, every day, and down to Ithaca and Corfu. Then they turned east, and they were in a sea that was supposed to be friendly, because Venice and the Turks were at peace.

  But Ser Marco, the captain of the galley, was very watchful. He was different from the aristocrats that Swan had seen in France. He was very professional, and he was on deck at all hours. He had grey in his beard, and no front teeth – when he smiled, he looked like a drunken bully Tom had known in his youth. But there was nothing drunken in his style on deck. He was demanding, and his men loved him.

  He was also very cautious. He seemed to expect pirates from every headland. He made them practise arming and disarming every day. Every day at dawn he had all the marines and all the archers on deck, fully armed, unless they were in port. When he discovered how good Alessandro was, he had the young nobleman direct a sword exercise – every day, rain or shine, on the gangway down the centre of the ship.

  The ports were pleasant – small towns, carefully fortified. The Venetian fortifications were always modern and well maintained. The guards of their garrisons turned out with a flourish.

  Venice took care of its overseas empire, that much was obvious.

  On the west coast of the Peloponnese, Genoa still held sway, and the Venetian galley stayed out to sea and didn’t touch land except for headlands. Swan stayed on deck all the time, watching the distant shore and trying to guess what part of the classical world they were passing. That low-slung isthmus – was that Sphacteria? Was that towering summit Mount Olympus?

  He got used to donning and wearing armour. He fenced with Alessandro every morning, and with Giannis, and with the three Venetian men-at-arms. The oarsmen would watch them, sometimes wager, and always offer raucous comments. They were not slaves.

  Around Attica, they put in at Piraeus, and the scarred Parthenon towered in the distance.

  ‘I must see it,’ Swan said. Cesare agreed, and when the capitano said they had a day, the two men rented mules and rode up from the port to the ruins of Athens. The Dukes of Athens maintained a residence on the summit of the Acropolis, but the duke wasn’t present. Swan climbed to the summit of the Acropolis in a state of near-awe, and stood on the steps of the Parthenon, looking up at its dazzling white stone, the miraculously intact roof, the carved coffers in the ceiling, the frieze of endless, marvellous statues – the gateway . . .

  He spent three hours wandering the crown of the Acropolis. Cesare sat down in the shade of an ancient olive tree.

  ‘Too damned hot. Enjoy yourself,’ he said.

  On the way back, Cesare cursed his mule, and then said, ‘You really love all that.’

  ‘It is right there,’ Swan said. ‘It’s . . . as if Pericles might come out and speak.’

  Cesare shook his head. ‘Insects and hot sunlight and greedy peasants,’ he said. ‘Much like home, but without the good wine and the taverns. And the cities and the money and the good roads.’

  ‘I copied down some of the epitaphs,’ Swan said excitedly. ‘Aeschylus!’

  ‘You sound as if you didn’t believe he was real before.’ Cesare shook his head.

  ‘The long haired Persians remember me in the grove of Marathon,’ Swan quoted. He looked at his tablets. ‘The wax is melting,’ he said, disgusted. ‘I copied one about another solider – Diodorus something. Fought in Egypt.’ He looked at the Italian. ‘Yes. It seems more real here than in England.’

  Cesare shook his head. ‘And you waited tables in an inn? What a fascinating country England must be.’

  At Naxos, the bishop, who hardly ever showed his face on deck, went to pay a visit to the Duke of Naxos, who was, of course, a Venetian.

  The Bishop of Ostia was a papal courtier. It was not his first trip outside of Rome, but one would never have guessed it. The man’s world view was utterly dominated by Rome, and he seemed to feel that the world existed to serve the Pope, which, as Alessandro said, was going to make his visit to Constantinople very exciting.

  Alessandro went with him to the Duke of Naxos. Swan looked at a temple of Apollo, paying two local men to be guides. He took Giannis, who was at least as bored as Cesare had been. The temple of Apollo was on an islet just off the coast. The local men spoke a dialect of Greek that Swan found incomprehensible at first, but by the end of the day he could joke with them and buy sausage from a woman in the streets of the principal city. While the bishop was feted in the palace, he sharpened his spoken Greek every day.

  On the third day Cesare was summoned to the palace, and he joined Swan in the cool of the evening, sitting on a terrace – really the roof of a large taverna. ‘This is more like it,’ Cesare said, drinking wine and admiring the girl serving at the next table.

  ‘What did the bishop want?’

  ‘A letter to the Pope. He thinks he’s the legate. I think the Pope will not thank him for dabbling in local politics, but I’m a mere notary.’ Cesare knocked back his wine. ‘I met a monk – a Greek monk. We had a bit of a debate.’ He smiled. ‘I liked him and invited him to come over for a cup of wine.’

  In fact, when the monk came, the tavern owner treated him with the kind of respect that an Italian tavern keeper kept for beautiful women and the very, very rich. The wine at their table was taken away, and replaced with a fresh pitcher that was, upon tasting, of much higher quality. The monk, who insisted that they call him Fra Demetrios, waved at the wine and said it was from Nemea.

  ‘With the lions,’ said Swan, in Greek.

  Fra Demetrios laughed. ‘Not bad. You are Florentine?’

  ‘English,’ said Swan.

  Fra Demetrios nodded. ‘Fine men, the English.’

  ‘You know England?’ asked Cesare.

  ‘I am from Lesvos,’ Fra Demetrios said. ‘The Gatelusi have maintained English soldiers to guard us from the Turks for . . . oh, I don’t know. A hundred years.’ He smiled. ‘The English are great pirates – but like good sheepdogs, they prey only on the wolves, eh?’

  The wars of the Gatelusi led to the fall of Constantinople.

  ‘The end of everything,’ said Fra Demetrios, and he shrugged. ‘Venice does not yet realise with what she is dealing. The Turks are ten – twenty – fifty times as powerful as Venice. That foolish old man – Foscari – is busy fighting petty lordlings in Italy, and the Turks will take all Greece.’ He looked at a pair of Turkish soldiers lounging in the street. They were mercenaries, serving with the Duke of Naxos, but they were, nonetheless, Turks. ‘In truth, they have already conqu
ered us. We merely await the axe.’

  After another pitcher of wine, he laughed at Cesare’s pretensions to learning. ‘Any Greek monk has read all the ancients,’ he said. ‘Not just the bits that have wandered out of our libraries to the west.’

  Cesare didn’t rise to the provocation, but smiled agreeably. ‘What texts do you have that we don’t?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I’ve read Aristotle.’

  ‘How many books?’ the monk asked.

  ‘Of Aristotle? All three.’ Cesare nodded. ‘De Anima, Ethics and The Athenian Consitution.’ He winked at Swan.

  ‘Three!’ said the monk. ‘By Saint George, my Latin friends, Aristotle wrote more than twenty books.’

  By the fourth pitcher of wine, Demetrios was writing the titles of every Greek book he’d ever read on Cesare’s tablets.

  In the market, Swan found tables of curios – dozens of classical seals and coins, as well as several small statues, rings, heads of gods, a bronze spearhead, a butt spike. He bought several of the seals, and the spearhead and butt spike.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘What will you do with this junk?’

  Swan handed over a silver coin with the owl of Athena on one side and a magnificent head of the goddess on the other. Alessandro pursed his lips in appreciation. ‘That is pretty,’ he admitted.

  ‘Worth money in Rome?’ Swan asked.

  Alessandro shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’

  Giannis looked at the coin. ‘You’ll find mountains of this old rubbish in Constantinople,’ he said.

  ‘How will we ship the cardinal’s things back to Rome?’ Swan asked.

  Alessandro stroked his beard. ‘Christ on the cross, I had forgotten. The bishop has me dancing attendance every day – I think he imagines I actually work for him.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Each port we’ve visited, they are expecting a Venetian squadron bringing soldiers.’

  Alessandro shrugged. ‘I heard of it in Venice. Genoa is losing a great many towns. They’ll need garrisons.’