Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Four Page 2

  ‘The Franciscan priest who said mass,’ Orietto said. ‘He’s from the Bardi family. All bankers.’ Orietto rubbed his chin. ‘He is asking a great many questions.’

  ‘Is he still in Mistra?’ Swan asked. His arrival had been ill timed, as the town was full of ‘Franks’ and not too kindly disposed, but the Franciscan’s gentle piety and dirty robes were hardly arrogant and the orthodox Greek bishop had chosen to ignore him. Swan had attempted to intervene for the Italian priest with the Despot, only to find the Despot already weary of the whole thing, as he often was.

  ‘I will not antagonise the West,’ he said. ‘I am priest-ridden enough already, however. I don’t need more.’

  The priest was sent for, and came, fresh from baptising two Albanian women, as it proved. Swan closed his eyes for a little while in what might have been prayer, thinking thoughts very similar to those of the Despot. His sigh was deep and meaningful.

  ‘Father, I have a question which I ask in the name of the Pope,’ he said.

  The Franciscan folded his hands in his lap. ‘Really? You seem an odd representative of the Holy Father,’ he said. His tone was light, and his eyes had a humour in them all too often lacking in priests.

  ‘Nonetheless, in this matter I am the Pope’s man,’ Swan said. ‘I gather you come from a family of bankers.’

  Father Guillermo nodded. ‘The Bardi,’ he said. ‘Although my family is really from Lucca, not the rich ones.’

  Swan nodded, tapping his teeth with his thumb, which he did far too often. ‘Tell me, Father,’ he said. ‘Why would the local factor of the Medici have no capital?’

  The Franciscan started. His face changed colour, and his hands moved. It was quite a giveaway of something, but Swan had no idea what.

  ‘How do you know this?’ asked the Franciscan, visibly shaken.

  ‘Your turn, Father,’ Swan said. ‘Why are you here? In the last capital of the Greek church?’

  ‘My order has the jurisdiction of Outremer,’ Father Guillermo said. ‘I may come and go as I please.’

  Swan was almost sure the priest was lying.

  ‘I had a bill on the Medici,’ Swan said. ‘From the Pope.’

  The Franciscan began to fidget with his prayer beads, a rope of a full hundred and fifty beads of wood and bone.

  ‘Perhaps the good father does not know that we are here paid by the Holy Father,’ Columbino put in. His lifted eyebrow said he was reading the priest as Swan had read him.

  The Franciscan sat back. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I know you have won a victory over the Turks. I confess I am not always sure that the arm militant worships the same Christ I worship.’ But his eyes returned to humour from fear.

  Swan nodded. ‘I understand your hesitation,’ he said. ‘Tell me, are there … tithes and so on? Collectable in Outremer? From Frankish merchants, for example?’

  The Franciscan looked at Swan for a long time; long enough for Columbino to fidget in his turn.

  He narrowed his eyes, and he looked like a much tougher man than Swan had taken him for. ‘By what right do you question me?’ Father Guillermo asked. ‘Are you holding me against my will?’

  Swan rose and opened the door. ‘Absolutely not, Father. I assume we are on the same side.’

  The priest rose and sketched a blessing in the air. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I must decline to answer any of your questions.’ He nodded, and Swan let him go.

  ‘Follow him,’ Swan said to Clemente.

  Clemente bowed and went through the door like smoke.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Orietto asked in colloquial Italian.

  Swan poured good Spartan wine from the amphora on the table, walked to the door, looked outside, and closed it carefully. ‘We are on the outer edge of a vast conspiracy,’ he said. ‘I’m not telling you any more so that you can sleep at night. Right now, all that matters is that the richest bank in this city cannot meet our bill on the Pope.’

  ‘Conspiracy?’ Columbino asked. ‘I’m from Sienna. My father was hanged as a traitor. I know all about conspiracy. Tell me, at least.’

  Di Silva leaned his chair back until it creaked and he had his shoulders comfortably against the frescoed wall. ‘I detest conspiracies,’ he said. ‘But we are friends, and what you know, I should know.’

  Orietto shrugged. ‘I am Veronese,’ he said. ‘I agree that it is usually a terrible thing to know of a conspiracy. But if you tell them, you might as well tell me, so we can all be assassinated together.’ He smiled. ‘What else are friends for?’

  Swan thought for a moment, tempted to confide, but the risk was insane. ‘I thank you,’ he said.

  ‘But you don’t trust us?’ Columbino asked, stung.

  ‘Don’t be a fool. He’s protecting us,’ Orietto said. ‘The Medici?’ he asked Swan.

  ‘Yes,’ Swan said.

  ‘And the Sforza?’ he asked.

  Swan shrugged.

  Orietto shook his head in turn. ‘He who says Medici says enough. I, for one, am ready to serve in any way you wish, but I’d rather not know that the Pope is helping the Turks, or whatever it is.’

  Swan winced. But he nodded. ‘I need you to take five lances and go down to Monemvasia. I need to know where Cardinal Trevisan and his fleet are, and I need to know what’s going on out there, and I need you to bring me back two thousand gold florins.’

  Orietto bowed. ‘At your service.’

  ‘Someone will try to ambush you, I promise.’ Swan smiled. It was a nasty smile.

  Then he outlined the rest of his plan to Di Silva and Columbino, Grazias and Kendal.

  ‘You are insane,’ the cautious Columbino said.

  Di Silva grinned. ‘I like it. And if it is insane, we will at least all be insane together.’

  The next morning, Swan rose with the dawn, watched five lances in polished armour ride out through the seven gates of the city and then followed the sun-dazzle on their armour as they rode away down the road at his feet and vanished into the distant haze of the Vale of Sparta.

  Then he walked down into the town, the lower town where foreign merchants resided and some richer Greeks and a small Armenian community, as well as a sizeable Jewish ghetto. He counted doors carefully from the V-shaped junction of two narrow streets, passed a yellow door with relief as to the accuracy of his instructions, and left a small white chalk mark at waist height on the stone wall opposite the door after the yellow door, and then he continued through the smell of cats and jasmine, and back out from under an arched tunnel to emerge on the walls. An eagle circled below him in the Vale of Sparta; it was on his right, the best of auguries in the ancient world, and he smiled and thought of Cyriac of Ancona.

  There was no rain, and the sun was beating down with enough warmth to suggest that spring might be in the air. Swan stood on the wall listening and waiting, to make sure he was not followed, and then he climbed by another set of stone steps, higher and higher, until he was on the third-level walls and could follow them around to the palace. It was an hour before he found Kendal; the archer was sitting having wine with Catacuzenos. He gave the all-safe sign and Swan went to his meeting with the Despot’s officers about an attack on one of the Albanian forts.

  The next day, Swan rode out with Columbino and twenty lances to reconnoitre the nearby fort at Sellasia; a fortress belonging to the notorious Trapezetos. The fort sat like an eagle’s nest on the southernmost of two rounded hills that appeared so much like a young woman’s breasts that Swan had to work to keep his face straight; all for nothing, as it proved that the two hills were called ‘The Breasts’.

  Swan looked up the slopes for an hour, from several vantage points. Metal twinkled along the height of the Breasts.

  Catacuzenos smiled cynically. ‘Too hard to assault, yes?’ he asked.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Maybe if my troops were paid. Not before.’

  ‘You have no other comment?’ asked one of the Paleologi, the cousins who officered most of the loyal troops.

  Swan smiled. ‘No,’
he said.

  The roads were miserable and Swan sent Columbino with fifteen lances to go around the Breasts to the south and return home over the plains. Columbino saluted, clearly annoyed to be given the dirty work, and rode away in a haughty fury.

  Kendal said quietly, ‘You’re never getting away with yon.’

  ‘Watch me,’ said Swan.

  He and Di Silva and the other three lances rode back into Mistra at sunset. Columbino was still somewhere to the south, wading through muddy fields and getting his armour dirty. Or so Swan told the gate guards when he asked them to keep the gates open late.

  Later, he was playing cards with Catacuzenos, Di Silva and Kendal. He was winning when an Imperial officer came in and whispered to Catacuzenos.

  ‘He says they must close the gates,’ Catacuzenos said.

  Swan let his annoyance show. ‘Where is the ingrate? Looting some village for wine? I’ll have his head.’

  ‘Thomas,’ muttered Di Silva. ‘Please be calm.’

  ‘My lord, would you like us to send men to look for them?’ Catacuzenos asked.

  Swan waved at Kendal. ‘Tell Grazias to mount immediately and go and find Columbino. He should be near by.’

  ‘I’ll go with them,’ Catacuzenos said.

  ‘Unnecessary.’ Swan smiled. ‘Ser Grazias will do the hard riding and you can play cards.’

  Grazias came in, rather ostentatiously pulling on his maille shirt, or so Swan felt.

  ‘I wish to protest, Ser Suane,’ he said carefully in Italian. ‘I was asleep. This is unfair.’

  ‘Continue with this complaint and I will show you what unfair is like,’ Swan said.

  Grazias glanced at Catacuzenos as if to say ‘you see how he treats us’, and then turned on his heel and strode out into the dark night.

  ‘Not enough fighting,’ muttered Di Silva.

  ‘I think they will all be fighting you,’ Catacuzenos said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘No money. If they aren’t paid, it will be ugly soon.’ He looked at his cards, fingered his discards ostentatiously, and said, ‘I’ll have the Pope’s money and all this will cease and we can attack some Albanian hill forts.’

  He watched the Greek’s eyes. They flicked to the door. To the throne room, where the Despot was in council.

  Swan sat back. ‘Shall we play?’ he asked. You hate him. Why do you hate him and yet serve him?

  The evening passed uneventfully except that Swan made money at cards, drank too much and went stumbling back to his room. Kendal refused to help him; Clemente was nowhere to be found, and Swan had to strip off his clothes by himself, roll up his dirty linens, and crawl into his bed.

  Only in the morning did Swan note the chalk mark outside his window. It was a curled mark he didn’t know, and he had to open Cyriac’s book and look at the back pages for a while until he understood. He threw a loose wool gown over his head, belted it, and thus, looking like a servant, walked out of his room carrying his own night jar. No one paid him the least notice, and he dumped the jar in the jakes and went out into the morning, among the cooing of doves and the calling of roosters, the sun already warm through his wool. He smiled, pulled up his hood and walked down into the lower town with a dirty chamber pot in his hand until he came to one of the open fountains, where he washed it, to the obvious disgust of a housewife, who glared at him so hatefully he thought she might strike him.

  He left the clean chamber pot on a ledge and hurried farther down into the town. When he passed the yellow door he knocked, once, turned into the next alley and went to the end. There was a smith, shoeing a mule. Swan waited and a woman emerged from the yellow door; an older woman with a fine figure in a Western gown with a jacket; more Burgundian than Italian. It was like finding a gold piece in a manure pile; she was not young, but her strong face and excellent clothes gave her a character. She was clean and neat, more handsome than pretty, and had an air of self-assurance that was rare in women. She walked up to Swan, took his hand and led him to the yellow door.

  ‘I’m a whore of sorts,’ she said quietly. ‘You can just come in. It is what everyone expects.’

  Swan sat on her bed. She lay on it, fully clothed, with a small copybook in her hands. ‘I really never expected anyone to contact me ever again,’ she said. ‘I suppose it says something about my life that spying seems noble, or at least exciting, next to spreading my legs for various grubby Italians. How is Cyriac?’

  ‘Ma donna, he is dead,’ Swan said. ‘Would you rather speak French?’

  ‘By Mary Magdalene,’ she said. ‘Bien sûr, mon vieux.’ She looked at him with her grey eyes. She had an excellent figure, and Swan found it difficult to pinpoint her age, which was somewhere between thirty and fifty. ‘Such a pleasure to speak French,’ she said in that language. ‘Cyriaco is dead? Oh, Madonna. I liked him. He was a good customer and a good spymaster, too.’ She blinked at him. ‘You see? I might trust you. In part because I know who you are; I confess, in fact, that I had hoped you would visit me as soon as I heard your men were wandering the town.’

  ‘I thought there were no prostitutes?’ Swan said.

  She smiled, unabashed. ‘I am not a common prostitute,’ she said. ‘I’m a courtesan, really. A sort of serial mistress. And I can count the Orthodox bishop among my friends. And your friend Catacuzenos, and the Despot Demetrios, who is, in fact, no friend of yours.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I suspected as much,’ he said. ‘But neither does he seem a man for pillow talk.’

  She smiled. ‘You would be surprised, Ser Suane.’

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ Swan said.

  ‘They call me Despoina Zenos, the foreign lady.’ She shrugged. ‘I had a name once, but I have misplaced it. Call me Marie.’

  ‘Misplaced it?’ he asked. ‘Do you have wine?’

  ‘I’m sure I can find you some,’ she said. She rolled off the bed, straightened her gown, went to a sideboard, produced an amphora, and then called out. A young girl came and shyly opened the door.

  ‘My daughter,’ Marie said. She handed the girl the amphora. ‘Wine,’ she said. ‘The best he has.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ the girl said. She was perhaps thirteen.

  Marie went and sat by Swan on the bed. ‘So. Cyriac is dead. You are the new master?’ She asked that with a flick of her tongue that had to have been intentional.

  ‘I suppose I am. Marie, do you know anything about the Catholic church here?’ he asked.

  She licked her lips. ‘You know they are all Orthodox. Heretics.’ She made a face.

  Swan nodded. ‘I have been out here since ’53,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’ She smiled. ‘You seem such a boy to me, to be a famous Turk-killer. Tell me, is it true you bedded Omar Reis’s daughter?’ she asked.

  Swan made a moue. ‘A gentleman does not kiss and tell,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘What a rogue. Well, sir, let me tell you that I am old in sin and in the trade, and I’m not to be trifled with.’ She began to unbutton her short jacket with her left hand, her fingers caressing the tight material, plucking at the small buttons. She began to kick her right leg in time to her buttons coming undone, and just as one very full and exquisite breast began to emerge, she produced a dagger from her right stocking.

  She put it right against Swan’s slightly engorged manhood with a dexterity that betrayed hundreds of repetitions in practice. The hollow between her breasts had produced a second dagger, this one very small.

  ‘Poison,’ she said. She was standing now. ‘So, tell me, what was Cyriac’s favourite thing in the world?’

  ‘The Ancients,’ Swan said.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. Her neck and the top of her breast were not those of a forty-year-old. Swan’s excitement had quite died; the poison on the dagger looked real, and he wondered what he’d walked into.

  ‘His favourite poet?’ she asked.

  ‘Ma donna, I do not know,’ he admitted. ‘I know he was searching for the poems of Sappho when he died. For Bessarion.’
>
  She was close enough that he could smell the cloves on her breath.

  ‘Ah, Sappho,’ she said. ‘Some say a troop of horse is the most beautiful, and some say a company of infantry, and some say a fleet of ships, but I say it is you, my love.’ She smiled. ‘Cyriaco taught me Greek,’ she said, and stepped back, sheathing a poisoned dagger between her breasts without so much as a glance.

  ‘I imagine you taught him a few things, as well,’ Swan said.

  She laughed. ‘I am quite close to the Despot,’ she said. ‘Sometimes when he is in a dark mood he comes and we play chess and fuck.’ She shook her head, and stood looking at a small icon of St John the Baptist on the wall. Her hands were on her hips. She seemed very much in charge of herself.

  ‘Can we go back to my question about the Frankish church here?’ he asked, working hard to keep up his nonchalance.

  She nodded, all business, turned. ‘Yes. Ask me and I’ll try to answer.’

  Just like that, she trusts me?

  Maybe she is quite mad.

  Or more professional than I am.

  ‘Are there papal tithes here?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. The merchants must pay, of course, and all the Franks in the town, and the merchants in Monemvasia. Athens has more Franks and so do Corinth and Thebes. They are very rich.’ She shrugged. ‘I went to Athens on pilgrimage two years ago during Lent. I made a tidy sum, although I fear I did not help the gentlemen keep their Lenten vows.’

  ‘Marie, can you tell me what the Roman church in Monemvasia brings in?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘A thousand florins?’ she guessed. ‘Five times that for Monemvasia, and as much again for Nafplion.’ She smiled cynically. ‘You might be interested to know that I was asked these same questions by the Franciscan friar.’

  Swan sat back. ‘Of course you were,’ he said. ‘Do you want to leave?’

  ‘For where?’ she asked.

  ‘I could take you to Rome. I wouldn’t take you in keeping there; I am not a rich man. But I could guarantee you free passage to Roma.’ He looked at her, radiating sincerity.

  ‘Why haven’t you asked me about your missing men?’ she asked. ‘I mean, are you not worried about your ensign and fifteen lances? Fifty men, all vanished?’