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

  The Bohemian woman laughed. ‘I’ll find you a groom, Captain.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Good. Let’s move.’

  He swung on to his riding horse, and they joined the column ahead of the baggage.

  It was a long day. Grazias went far ahead, and a string of messengers told him that there were people in every campsite.

  Swan opened his script and took out an itinerary he’d copied by hand at the last monastery. It listed towns by name, all the way to Belgrade, with distances in Roman miles.

  He sent Clemente forward to tell Grazias to go all the way forward to the next fortified monastery at Sándorfalva. Men who heard him cursed.

  Swan trotted up his column and all the way to the rearguard, explaining – a long march, and camping in the darkness.

  Di Vecchio met him at the wagons. ‘Good to practice moving in near- darkness,’ he said. ‘Next time warn us.’

  Swan laughed. ‘Let’s call it an unplanned practice,’ he said.

  The fields to the east were full of people, and the smell of wood fires. They passed a hamlet, and all the houses had been looted, their wattle and wicker walls broken but not burned.

  Columbino was waiting, fully armed. He had the vanguard.

  ‘Not our men,’ he said.

  Swan cursed.

  Grazias emerged from the darkness.

  ‘Two hours to go at least,’ he said. ‘See the ridge? All the way over it, I’m afraid. But the monks are delighted to have us, and will sell us food and fodder. They say it’s worse closer to the Danube and worse still a day farther south.’

  Swan pointed to the lines of fires to the east.

  Grazias nodded. ‘If the Satan-spawn infidels come, they’ll go through this like a hot knife through oil,’ he said. ‘But there are no Turks out there, and maybe all the peasants are a blessing. We’ll know if they panic.’

  Swan rode for a minute in silence. ‘There were ten thousand men at Vienna, or more,’ he said.

  Grazias laughed. ‘You mean, why aren’t they here, protecting the Hungarians?’ He took his high-crowned beaver hat from his head and scratched. ‘Ah – lice. I hate lice,’ he said. ‘Listen, Ser Thomas. In a day or two we will be on the edge of Serbia. All heretics and schismatics, like me.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Swan said.

  The two hours of marching in the darkness turned to three when a wagon lost a wheel on the up-slope of the ridge, and the wheelwright proved to be drunk. Swan tried to be everywhere – never, in the last week, had he missed Peter more. But Di Vecchio kept the rearguard busy putting out vedettes against sudden Turkish attack in the darkness, and Swan told Columbino to emulate him in the vanguard. When it was clear that the wagon was savable, Swan put Columbino in charge of the column and had them march hard for the monastery while he remained behind with the rearguard and the wagons that could not pass the defile.

  The three Bohemian wagons had been right behind the one with the broken wheel. Swan posted the Bohemians on the ridge above the road and tried to ignore the near-panic among the rearguard’s men-at-arms, most of whom were inexperienced ‘crusaders’.

  Finally, annoyed at the tone he heard from one faceless man in armour – who vented his fear on a prostitute in the last wagon but one – Swan rode down to the base of the ridge and summoned the men-at-arms not on more distant pickets.

  ‘There’s not a Turk for two hundred leagues,’ he said. ‘If you lot consider yourselves “gentlemen”, I suggest you reach down deep, grab hold of something in which you take a little pride, and shut up. The whores are less concerned than you. But then,’ Swan said, with absolute certainty, ‘they’ve seen a lot more war than most of you.’

  He left them in a stony silence and trotted back up the column to where a considerably more sober wheelwright was affixing a wheel. Šárka came and stood by his stirrup. Silently, she handed him a cup of hot wine. After a pause, she said, ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’

  ‘What, that the rearguard are behaving like cowards? They are.’ Swan was furious.

  ‘That the women were braver. Weak men punish women who try to be strong.’ She shrugged.

  He looked down. She was in shadow and unreadable. ‘You tell me if this happens,’ he said in his careful Hungarian. ‘I will take action.’

  ‘You will punish a man for hitting a whore?’ she asked.

  ‘Doesn’t Ladislav?’ he asked.

  ‘To Ladislav we are all part of his strange family of blood,’ she said.

  The wheel was on. ‘Will you cook dinner in camp?’ he asked.

  She took the cup from his hands. ‘I will have dinner cooked,’ she said.

  ‘May I buy dinner for Clemente and for me? Until I have a casa again.’

  She bobbed a curtsy. ‘Such a fine lord to dine twice in two nights,’ she said. ‘Makes me think he wants more than dinner.’ The wagon moved. Horses were being brought. ‘You don’t have to be so … cautious.’

  Swan laughed. It was a little of his old laugh. ‘My sweet,’ he said in Hungarian, ‘I probably know every whore in the north of Italy. I’m not cautious. Merely busy.’

  But he was cautious, he thought. Something had changed, and in the fatigue-laced darkness, he tried to imagine what had gone into him – or out of him.

  It all came back to Peter. Peter kept right on being dead, all the time. Every time he had a witticism to impart, or a petty remark to pass in private – Peter was still dead.

  And Donna Sophia came to mind. A ringing slap and the kiss of a hand. And yet he knew her as if they were related. He would talk to her …

  He sighed. And trotted along the rearguard. There was a great deal of grumbling, and he was learning some surprising phrases in German.

  And he missed Di Bracchio – Bembo, now.

  ‘I’m commanding fifty lances on a crusade against the Turks,’ he said aloud. To remind himself.

  At that moment, bells sounded, their deep bronze voices rolling across the Pannonian plain. He felt immense relief, and was immediately annoyed with himself.

  But Clemente had his pavilion up. His bed was made, and so was the boy’s, and he wanted to hug the page. ‘Your cough is better,’ he said.

  Clemente laughed. ‘The pretty ladies are better than the monks,’ he said. ‘Honey and hot wine. And some greens – never mind. The green stuff was terrible.’

  ‘I’ve arranged for the pretty ladies to feed us,’ Swan said.

  ‘I know,’ Clemente said. They’d been in camp only long enough for Swan to picket his horse, but Clemente already knew everything.

  ‘I need a page and a servant,’ Swan said. ‘You are doing everything.’

  ‘And a woman,’ the boy said. ‘Di Vecchio has one, and Ser Columbino has bought the whole contract of one of the Hungarian girls to have her for himself.’

  ‘Stop!’ Swan laughed. ‘I don’t want to know!’

  ‘I thought that I was your spy!’ the boy said. ‘I’ll go fetch dinner.’

  Swan shook his head. ‘Light the lamps and help me out of my harness.’

  ‘How is it, lord? The new armour?’ Clemente asked as he went to work on the arms – always the first piece to come off.

  ‘I never notice it,’ Swan admitted. ‘So it must be awfully good.’

  He joined the boy in wiping every piece with an oily piece of sheepskin and it was all placed in wicker baskets off the damp ground. When Swan felt eighty pounds lighter – and was – they walked across the camp to the Bohemians’ position, to the left at the end. The current camp was laid out in the order of march – not always followed for various reasons of command. But the stradioti occupied the right of the camp as they faced south, where the enemy might or might not be, and the Bohemians were on the left, and Columbino’s lances and the English, his most trusted troops, were in the centre around his own tent.

  It was after midnight, but the camp was busy. Swan stopped at a fire, where he recognised Di Vecchio’s standard-bearer, a gaunt old Malatesta veteran called Fortebracchi
o. The man rose to his feet and saluted – Swan all but jumped for joy to be accepted as commander by these men – and Swan took him aside to say that he was not going to move at first light.

  The man nodded. ‘The Blessing of San Giorgio on you,’ he said. ‘The lads won’t want to move.’

  ‘Let ’em sleep,’ Swan said, hoping he sounded like a commander.

  Then he collected Clemente and walked to the Bohemians.

  Clemente unfolded his stool with a flourish, and Swan sat and was handed a whole chicken and a huge leather jack of dark beer.

  Ladislav came and sat on the ground. ‘Orders?’ he asked.

  ‘Sleep late,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll have the English take the dawn watch.’

  Ladislav laughed. ‘This is the best I hear in a long time,’ he said. ‘By the Virgin, I am tired. We must have come twenty leagues today, and the horses are tired. I confess it, even I am tired.’ He leaned in. ‘Listen, though. I want to suggest a thing. A …’ He used a Bohemian word and then a Hungarian word, and Swan didn’t know either.

  ‘A war thing?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the Bohemian replied.

  ‘A stratagem?’ Swan asked.

  ‘No, a weapon.’ The Bohemian waved his hands. But his description was simple enough.

  ‘A light cannon,’ Swan said. ‘I used one. On Rhodos.’

  ‘Good!’ the Bohemian said. ‘Even a little gun that throws a ball the size of a duck’s egg can keep the Turks away – a long way. No one likes being killed from afar – without any ability to reply, hein?’

  Swan nodded. ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘Surely Belgrade has guns.’

  ‘The Poles and the Serbs and the Hungarians are all barbarians,’ Ladislav said. Coming from a man with the dead eyes of a long-time killer, this statement bore a certain weight. ‘They burn, they fight, they kill, but they have fuck-all science.’ His use of the Latin word was surprising, but Ladislav knew a great deal of Latin, like many of the Bohemians Swan had met. ‘Except Hunyadi. He is all science.’ The man nodded grimly.

  ‘Still …’ Swan said. He could see Šárka and two young men with a huge copper pot by the fire. There was a sort of tent frame over the fire, and the fire itself wasn’t in a simple pit, but a long, narrow trench. Swan took it in immediately – more fire in a more efficient arrangement. And the heavy tripods at either end of the crossbar would hold a number of kettles – all full – with ease. And dry clothes. They hung by chains, not ropes.

  The Bohemians knew a lot about war.

  ‘What if the Turks come on us here?’ the Bohemian asked.

  ‘We form the wagons in a circle and hold,’ Swan said. ‘We lose some horses.’

  ‘Not if we have a little cannon. Then we make them pay just to see the horses.’ The man grinned. ‘This I promise.’

  Swan ate a whole chicken leg in three famished bites. Hunger made his old wounds and muscle aches worse, and he was always amazed by the speed with which food made him feel better. He hadn’t been aware of how hungry he was. He missed Antoine, who had been with him for years. Antoine was, he hoped, happily asleep in a bed in Rome. Or perhaps still in Venice. Swan had assigned him a mission that should have been pleasant. He sighed.

  ‘And where do I get a falconet – for so the Italians call them – here on the plains?’ Swan asked.

  The Bohemian nodded. ‘Good question. But maybe we find one. Every fortified house has one or two. I have fought in Serbia.’

  ‘Why don’t you have one on your wagons, anyway?’ Swan asked.

  Šárka joined them. ‘Too heavy,’ she said. ‘I made them get rid of the thing, and here is my Ladislav trying to make you buy another.’

  ‘Who said buy, woman?’ Ladislav snapped. ‘We can just take one.’

  Šárka rolled her eyes. ‘Too heavy.’

  Ladislav leaned back. ‘You are a better soldier than me?’ he asked.

  She frowned. ‘I know more about keeping everyone fed and fucked than you,’ she said.

  Ladislav laughed. ‘You do, too. I’d have starved to death many times.’ He sat back.

  ‘I fear the Turks on this open ground,’ Swan said. ‘I could spare another wagon or two, to carry guns.’

  ‘See?’ Ladislav said.

  ‘Eat your chicken,’ Šárka said.

  Swan elected not to ask from whence the chicken had come. ‘What do I owe you?’ he asked.

  She smiled. She did not smile often, and her smile was often a complete pretence – her real smile was a fleeting, shy thing. ‘I will keep a tally,’ she said.

  Ladislav laughed and got up. ‘Better find out what you are paying now,’ he said. ‘You could owe her all Vienna. Šárka loves money.’

  ‘I do not,’ she spat. ‘I love not being poor, or any rich man’s slave.’

  Swan found that he had destroyed the chicken. And someone had drunk his cool, dark beer.

  He rose. ‘Thanks for a splendid dinner, ma donna,’ he said.

  She curtsied. ‘You won’t stay?’ she asked boldly.

  ‘No,’ Swan said.

  ‘Bah,’ she said.

  An odd reaction. Swan thought about it as he walked back to his tent. But then he was asleep.

  The English grumbled when he sent them out into the dawn. He pissed into some shrubs that had once been part of the monastery garden and went back to his blankets and slept until the sun was embarrassingly high in the sky. When he rose, he was allowed to bathe in the monastery, and he put on clean linens. The abbott was a good man, and they had a long discussion about the lay of the land.

  ‘There are other crusaders,’ the abbot, Steven, said. His Latin was odd, but fluent. ‘The Germans are gathering at Petrovaradin, which they call Peter Wardein. There is a good bridge there, and two fortresses. But from there you must cross Serbia to reach Belgrade, and Serbia is not … active against the Turks. Do you know who George Branković is, my lord?’

  Swan nodded. ‘I have heard about him since … for more than a year. The Despot of Serbia. The richest man in the world, some say.’

  ‘Perhaps less rich since he lost all his silver mines,’ the Abbot said. ‘He has to be neutral. The Turks can have him any time they wish. Serbia has been bled white fighting the Turks for more than a hundred years.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I am not a German crusader,’ he said. The Germans were reputed to hate the Serbs.

  ‘No,’ the abbot said. ‘In Hungary – just north of here, since a week ago – Fra John Capistrano of the Dominican order has been preaching crusade. He has a camp, and his people are stripping the countryside. He must have ten thousand little people there, and even a few nobles.’ He shrugged.

  Swan had heard of him many times since Carvajal mentioned him. And Alessandro, too, come to think of it – back before Vienna. Swan shook his head. A full night of sleep had been immensely helpful, but as usual lately, Peter was still dead.

  ‘Finally, I think that the regent – Lord Hunyadi – is off to the east, in Romania. I have a letter – a general letter – from him, set at Temesvár.’ He gave Swan the letter, which he read. It requested the lords of eastern Hungary and the ‘milites’ to attend him at Temesvár, or failing that, at Kovin on the Danube.

  Swan thanked the abbot, who had been extremely forthcoming. ‘Any word on the Turks?’ he asked.

  ‘Every fleeing man counts ten Turks at his back,’ the abbot said. ‘But the Serbs say they are moving fast. Still, they are not yet to Belgrade. They are not yet even in Serbia.’

  Swan thought of his rearguard the night before and winced. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said, kissing the abbot’s ring.

  ‘Go with God,’ the abbot said gently. ‘Your men are marvellous well conducted. I have had no complaints from my people.’

  ‘I’ll pass that along,’ Swan said.

  They rested all day and marched again at dawn. South of Sándorfalva, the terrain was, if anything, flatter. They were far from the Danube, now, moving towards it again – it had passed far to the west, b
ut would now appear across their route to the south.

  Grazias came along at noon. The day was brutally hot, and men were broiling in armour, but Swan had all the officers at work keeping the men fully armed, and moving – there were small patrols off constantly into the dust on either side of the road.

  Grazias had his whole kaftan unbuttoned. When he reined in, he stripped it off, so that he wore only a sleeveless Italian doublet and a billowing shirt. ‘Blessed Saint Basil,’ he muttered. ‘It’s like being in hell.’

  But he put his corselet and his mail mantle back on over his shirt, anyway.

  ‘There’s a big camp of Germans,’ he said. ‘They were friendly, and there’s a market. I suggest we camp with them.’ He looked at the distant, hazy, hot horizon. ‘But pretty soon you need to decide whether we go south through Serbia or east.’

  Swan nodded. ‘East,’ he said. ‘The abbot says Hunyadi is at Temesvár. Or was. That’s the rendezvous for … professional soldiers.’

  ‘Ah.’ Grazias nodded. ‘Hunyadi. I have longed to meet him. Had he won Varna, I would not be here.’

  ‘None of us would,’ Swan agreed.

  The German crusaders were, if not professional, at least several cuts above what Swan had seen at Vienna. They had a large wagon burg and several hundred Bohemian mercenaries to stiffen their inexperience. No one lord seemed to be their commander, and yet their camp had well-sited latrines and an air of discipline.

  Swan rode forward with Ser Columbino and Clemente as his trumpeter. They were well received and offered wine by the three men who were apparently in charge. Swan accepted two cups of wine, declined dinner, and asked after their plans.

  The Graf von Bulow, a portly man in a cherry-coloured gown and an embroidered biretta that looked as if it had come straight from Rome, merely shrugged. ‘You know that your Cardinal Carvajal has moved to Buda?’ he asked.

  Swan didn’t know, but he wasn’t surprised that the man hadn’t ridden with him.

  ‘He’s trying to get my countrymen to move,’ Von Bulow said. He looked at another of the trio, Claus Ritter, a small man with thick lips and a habitually dour look, who nonetheless had a broad grin when amused. His armour had seen hard use – even his standard looked old.