Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Four Read online

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade

  Volume Four

  Christian Cameron

  Contents

  Title Page

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Volume Four

  Also by Christian Cameron

  Copyright

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade (Vienna)

  The May sun was warming the plains of Terra Firma behind them, and in the Venetian lagoon, the heat was already rising and the city stank of dead fish. But in the high alpine passes that led north from the Serenissima and her inland empire to Udine and farther north to Austria, the snow still stuck, and the wind blowing through Thomas Swan’s magnificent, heavy green wool cloak might have frozen a man to death in minutes. Swan’s hands were covered by heavy deer hide gauntlets over thin chamois swordsman’s gloves and still his hands were leaden and cold, and his left hand ached every time he flexed his fingers – which he now did, repeatedly, as if the pain in the palm of his hands gave him some perverse pleasure.

  Despite which, he had only to look back over his column to have a smile as broad as a ship’s stern break over his face. Behind him jingled a column of men-at-arms, almost forty lances in Milan’s best plate armour; thirty-eight fully armoured men-at-arms, thirty-eight armoured squires, and thirty-eight lightly armoured crossbowmen who nonetheless, because Italian notions of ‘light armour’ were as catholic as their views on the divinity, included mail shirts and steel breasts and backs, burgonets or simple open-faced sallets or old bassinets recut. They rode good horses – better horses than those on which many of them had entered Venice.

  Behind them rode six well-mounted English archers, and ahead of the column somewhere were a dozen Greek – or Vlach or Albanian – stradiotes, ‘light cavalry’ with bows and sabres – and mail shirts and steel cuirasses. It was, in fact, a small army, and it was all Thomas Swan’s.

  Ser Thomas Swan.

  He looked at his pennon, fluttering in the icy wind next to that of his master, Cardinal Bessarion, and his grin all but hurt his face. It certainly banished the pain in his left hand and the knowledge that he couldn’t move two of the middle fingers very much and had begun to fear that their tendons were cut for ever.

  He rode back along his column, where Ser Columbino, still recovering from his wounds, saluted him with a smile. Columbino was now a proven man – and, increasingly, his lieutenant. Swan was modest enough to suspect that Columbino was a better officer than he himself – he never forgot details like straw and oats and horseshoe nails and he had already shown himself to know more about carts and wagon construction then Swan ever hoped to know.

  Farther back, Swan passed Di Vecchio – an ageing man-at-arms of fifty or more. He didn’t grin, he didn’t look pleased, and when Swan nodded cheerfully, Di Vecchio returned merely a civil nod. Di Vecchio and his lances – twenty-eight of them – had in fact fought against Swan and Columbino in the darkened streets of Venice. They had lost.

  Swan had, in fact, saved them all from the headsman’s axe. Despite which, there was not a smile from the rest of the Malatesta men-at-arms. Swan’s eye passed over the unhappy faces – bitter or merely cold – and looked at a hundred other details he’d learned from the Knights of St John or from Peter his master-archer-cum-servant or from Ser Columbino or from Alessandro, now Lord Bembo of Venice.

  Buckles were one of his measures of professional competence. Buckles took time and effort to do up, and slovenly soldiers left two-thirds of them unbuckled. With new leathers this could be done, but the weight of, say, a breastplate would very quickly stretch and then break a strap – or put weight on things like canteen straps or sword belts.

  In Venice, they could be replaced in an hour.

  In the middle of an Alpine pass, a single broken strap could cost a hundred and fifty men time – ten minutes or so, perhaps, while something was found to replace the strap.

  Swan thought of Xenophon. One of the ancient general’s many pieces of advice on making war was ‘take many spare leather straps’. It was the sort of detail that made Swan love old Xenophon, despite the man’s innate aristocratic assumptions. At least he’d ‘been there’.

  ‘You there,’ he called.

  The man he wanted rode by without even glancing at him. He was a squire or a man-at-arms – a handsome Umbrian lad wearing a good harness of Milan’s best. He had the new, exaggerated pauldrons and the new wings on his knees that protected the back of the knee.

  But his harness sounded like a tinker’s cart, and he looked wrong. It was difficult to define, but his middle was too big and his shoulders weren’t on well and he didn’t have his surcoat done up. He looked slovenly.

  Swan was conscious of his failure to know the man’s name. This was exactly why the gentry of the Order made their volunteers learn the name of every mercenary under their command, and he cursed his failing as the man rode smugly on. There wasn’t room on the narrow road to follow him.

  Swan had a good head for arms and weapons, however. And faces.

  By the time the whole column was past him he’d noted a dozen discrepancies he didn’t like. He paused at the rearguard to accept Bigelow’s salute. The English, despite their reputation as barbarians, had an easy notion of discipline that Swan shared – there were times to play the game, and times to share a beer. Bigelow seemed to know this instinctively – that the former Malatesta men-at-arms were, in effect, hostile, and hence some signs of military bearing were required.

  It was all very complicated, the whole process of command.

  At the next wagon turn, where the trail broadened, Swan cantered back along the column, now ignoring Di Vecchio’s men to ride back to his rightful place at the head of the column. There, the leader of the stradiotes, Constantine Paleologus Grazias, distant relation of the now-dead emperor, exile and new Venetian, awaited him, his heavy wool kaftan buttoned and tied from waist to neck and his broad felt hat pulled well down over his eyes.

  ‘Messer Grazias,’ Swan said.

  ‘Ser Thomas.’ Grazias grinned. Swan’s knighthood was so new that he still smiled every time his title was used, like a new bride, and Grazias seemed one of those men who actually enjoyed the success of others. He pointed up the road with an arrow from his quiver, and the steel head twinkled in the weak sun.

  ‘We saw the glitter of metal on the hillside there.’ He shook his head. ‘What lives up here – giants? Titans from the old myths?’

  Indeed, the Alpine pass was not made to a human scale – the steep slopes above soared away to almost impossible heights, and yet were covered in grass and rock like the hills of Greece redone at an impossible scale.

  Swan looked under his hand. ‘Who would attack a hundred and fifty soldiers?’ he asked.

  Grazias made a very Greek face. ‘Two hundred soldiers? Rolling rocks?’

  So Swan spaced his men out, put distance between the files and lances, and the column proceeded as quickly as could be managed through the narrowest part of the pass. Grazias stayed by him, his eyes everywhere.

  ‘Do you know Polybius?’ he asked.

  Swan had heard that there was another Greek historian. ‘Polybius?’ he asked. ‘No,’ he admitted.

  Grazias was watching the hillside. ‘I think I have been fooled by sheep with new bells,’ he admitted. ‘Polybius is mostly about Rome’s wars with Carthage. Hannibal? You know of him?’

  Swan thought of bridling – but most of the Greeks were better educated men than most Italians, at least in their own classics. They had a certain advantage – their language.

  ‘I know of Hannibal,’ Swan said.

  ‘I wonder if this is the pass he used,’
Grazias mused.

  Swan thought for a while, watching the hillsides, imagining them full of – Kelts? And his own column including elephants. But he was going the wrong way …

  Swan knew Hannibal only from a general history compiled in Italian. But he shook his head. ‘Aren’t we too far east for Hannibal?’ he asked.

  Grazias frowned. ‘I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose that I prefer to think I’m in the footsteps of the ancients.’

  Peter leaned forward. He had been at Swan’s shoulder since the column became alert. ‘We are always in the footsteps of the ancients,’ he said. He handed Grazias a bronze arrowhead. ‘From our last halt.’

  The Greek aristocrat favoured Peter with a brilliant smile. ‘By the risen Christ, sire! A fine gift. My thanks!’

  Two hours later they approached one of the pilgrim inns that the locals used to fleece the weary traveller. The size of Swan’s force and his papal banner gained them respect, but not lower prices, and Swan watched his store of golden ducats drain away under the impact of one hundred and fifty men and horses and the cost of feeding and housing them in the cold, late spring passes.

  The inn itself resembled a fortress – a mixture of whitewashed plaster, stone and heavy timber with steeply sloping roofs and a range of narrow windows. Dozens of shields graced the heavy wooden façade, representing generations of crusaders, pilgrims and Imperial incursions into northern Italy. It was just a day’s travel north of Udine. Swan knew it all to well, having spent the past autumn and early winter riding up and down this very pass.

  Swan sat to a fine dinner, attended by Clemente, whose bent back had unbent considerably in a month, and Peter, who was more of a guest and less of a servant. The two of them ate a heavy pork dish and some noodles and drank the heavy Italian reds they preferred.

  Swan was on his second cup of wine when one of the inn’s staff approached with an Alpine lack of servility to announce the arrival of another guest. Doors opened, cold air swept in, and Alessandro Bembo stood revealed.

  Swan was delighted, and he and Peter swept their board, unfolded a camp stool and embraced the newly minted Venetian nobleman.

  Alessandro sat, picked up Swan’s silver wine cup and drained the contents. ‘Son of a whore,’ he said. ‘That’s our wine.’

  Swan laughed. ‘Veronese, I think, my wine connoisseur. And we are lucky to have it here.’

  Alessandro nodded. Peter poured more wine, and Bembo swirled it in his cup. ‘You make good time, for a man with an army as his tail.’

  Swan flushed with pleasure at the praise. ‘To me, everything seems to take a year. But you must have news – otherwise you would not be your own courier.’

  Bembo nodded. He handed over a parchment scroll. ‘This from Bessarion. It came the same day you left.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is my last mission for the cardinal. I sent him my regrets – but when you read it, you’ll understand its urgency.’

  Swan read the document – two pages, carefully written. He whistled.

  ‘The King of Hungary has fled to Vienna?’ he asked.

  Alessandro nodded heavily. ‘In Venice they are openly contemplating withdrawal from the alliance they signed but five days hence.’

  Swan pursed his lips and read on. ‘So, the Spanish cardinal – our friend Carvajal and this Franciscan …’ He flipped back through the stiff pages.

  ‘Capistrano. Giovanni di Capistrano.’ Alessandro spat the name.

  ‘Where do I know that name?’ Swan asked. ‘Oh …’

  ‘The Grand Inquisitor of Hungary?’ Alessandro grinned without any mirth. ‘As a Franciscan, he’s killed more Christians than the Sultan.’

  Swan sighed. ‘The massacre—’

  ‘Just so,’ Alessandro said. ‘Gypsies, homosexuals, Jews, Bogmils, and people who annoy him. He’s like the plague. Only now he’s the papal legate’s left hand in Hungary.’

  ‘Jesus Christe,’ Swan swore in his English Latin. ‘Carvajal hates him.’

  He went back to reading.

  ‘So – Mehmet has eighty thousand men at Edirne and Hunyadi has ten thousand to oppose them?’ He threw the papers down. ‘Mother Mary.’

  Alessandro nodded. He drew another document from his breast. ‘This,’ he said hesitantly, ‘…is a letter from the Pope to the Sultan.’

  Swan’s head came up as if he’d been struck.

  Alessandro pointed to the heavy seals.

  ‘I don’t know the contents, but …’ He paused and drank. ‘But Bessarion feels sure that the current Pope would never make peace with the enemy.’

  The two men looked at each other, a look almost as close and intense as that between lovers.

  ‘It’s a surrender?’ Swan asked. He laughed. ‘What could we offer that Mehmet II can’t just take?’ He tasted his wine. ‘Italy? France?’

  ‘I don’t think the Pope would waste parchment on a cartel of defiance,’ Alessandro said. ‘That is, I imagine he would, but not at the risk of Bessarion’s good name. And you.’ He doodled in wine on the table. ‘I’m sorry, Tommaso. This is hard news I bear. First, Bessarion says you must use your own judgmeent as to whether to proceed past Vienna – past meeting with his trusted friend the Spanish cardinal. Second, that if you choose to go all the way to Belgrade …’ He frowned. ‘He charges you to deliver the Pope’s possibly hostile letter.’

  ‘What – exactly – are you saying?’ Swan said.

  Alessandro’s eye bored into his, passing the hidden message. Swan thought he had it.

  ‘The cardinal and the Pope want you to meet with the Sultan,’ Alessandro said, as if to a child.

  ‘And?’ Swan asked slowly.

  Alessandro indicated the letter. ‘I thought of opening it. If you have time, I suggest you do so. I don’t have any idea what they expect of you. As one retired thug to another – every time we pull a rose out of a dunghill, they find it easier to assume we’ll do it again.’

  ‘What would you do?’ Swan asked. He had it – from Alessandro’s body language. The reality of Alessandro’s unspoken assertion went through him like electricity.

  ‘Do you know, at the Feast of Crows – the great battle in the last century when the Serbs lost everything – one of the prisoners murdered the Sultan. You know this?’

  Swan frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘Well – it happened. The man probably saved Serbia for a generation. But then, the Serbs also saved the Sultan at Nicopolis, against the crusade of the French. So …’

  ‘What are you saying, Alessandro?’ Swan asked.

  ‘That the Sultan’s killer died a particularly horrible death, and accomplished very little,’ Alessandro said. ‘And I wish you to keep this story in mind.’

  ‘You think that the letter is merely a pretext to get me close to the Sultan, and that I’m to understand that I am to assassinate him.’ Swan smiled.

  Alessandro smiled like a fox. ‘I have said nothing of the kind.’

  ‘And further you suggest that this would neither save Belgrade nor be particularly good for me personally, and that Bessarion allows me to find alternatives.’ Swan shook his head.

  ‘You could, if you wished, interpret me to be saying something like that. I could not stop you, English.’ Di Bracchio, now Bembo, leaned forward. ‘These inns are full of drumheads and spies,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’ve used them.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I’ve had a year of this road,’ he admitted. ‘I even know the whores by name.’

  ‘So I will say this carefully. Hunyadi cannot save Belgrade with his banderium, his private army. And your hundred soldiers, no matter how elite, can’t even help.’ His eyes locked with Swan’s. ‘But if Belgrade falls …’ He shrugged. ‘Buda. Probably Vienna.’ He looked away. ‘Part of me – the Di Bracchio part, the paid killer – says that it’s what the Duke of Burgundy and the Kings of England and France and the Holy Roman Emperor all deserve.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps my recent elevation has gone to my head. But I will take my ship to sea with the Venetian fleet, and we �
�� the money-grubbing merchant princes – will do our level best to save Europe.’ He smiled grimly. ‘So I will hope – quietly – that you will find a solution. Bessarion also hopes so. It is too late to find you a thousand lances.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘But Bessarion gives you this.’ He tossed a letter of credit on the table. The figure was high.

  Swan whistled. He was out of blasphemy. Then he grinned.

  ‘Alessandro, does it not make your heart rise?’ he said in his scholarly Italian. ‘That at this, the crisis of the West, they must turn to you and me to save them?’

  Alessandro grinned. ‘They always do, when they’re desperate.’

  Morning dawned, far below them, and Alessandro embraced Swan in the frozen courtyard. He had two horses.

  ‘Perhaps I just wanted out of my father’s house,’ he admitted. ‘I think I’d rather be riding to Belgrade than back to Venice.’

  Swan shook his head. ‘Kiss … the governess for me,’ he said.

  Alessandro smiled. ‘I’m sure she sent a note for you – somewhere. Perhaps I put it in the letter of credit – eh?’

  ‘You former bastard,’ Swan said.

  Bembo laughed. He waved, and rode off into the snow.

  There was, in fact, a note inside the letter of credit, but well-bred, even if penniless, young gentlewomen do not write emotional, provocative or lust-inducing letters. Swan read about her charge’s latest foolishness in church, and about her seeking a new position.

  But she did close with the line ‘My heart seeks for yours daily, and will until you return safely, my dear crusader’.

  He took that as positive.

  He also noticed with regret the attractions of the flaxen-haired woman who poured his morning beer. He wondered how many days of celibacy he would manage.

  And then he went out into the yard, mounted his riding horse, and led his column for another day over the passes into Austria.

  Austria was full of young women, but none seemed worth attracting to his bed, and the trulls of the big inns were suddenly less attractive to him than they had been a few months ago, before his knighthood. He did see a few pretty faces on the road who quickened his pulse, and as the column descended into Villach they exchanged greetings with a Hapsburg nobleman and his daughter whose heart-shaped face and straight back attracted so much of Ser Tommaso’s attention that when they had passed, Peter laughed coarsely.