Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome Read online

  ‘Do not, I beg you, bait our employer,’ Di Brachio said. ‘You and I know that Mehmet has every intention of conquering the world. This Bessarion needs to know. You and I know that Mehmet the Second, may his name be blessed, is a far, far more moral ruler than most of the perverted creatures who inhabit the College of Cardinals. We do not say this out loud. Mm?’

  Swan nodded in humility. ‘I’ll watch my tongue next time,’ he said.

  Di Brachio laughed. ‘No, you won’t. But never mind. I have a note in my hand that authorises the steward to pay us. I can see, with nothing more than a glance about this palazzo, that the good cardinal is in funds – look, those silver ewers were in pawn when we were here before. Eh? So we’ll be paid.’

  He suited action to word, walking down to the offices on the first floor, where Swan had rarely been. A dozen clerks, some in holy orders and some just ink-stained young men, sat at desks like oar benches, writing furiously. The steward of the household was a middle-aged priest, tall, with chiselled features and a strong build, and he took the note from the cardinal and nodded.

  ‘Ah – you are the famous young Messer Swan,’ he said in Genoese Italian. He frowned. ‘I understand that after your last escapade, half my clerks were lamed by the Orsini, who chased them through the streets every day for a month.’

  Swan tried to look apologetic.

  The priest bit his thumbnail. ‘Household servants are paid on Thursday next.’ He made a note and smiled at Di Brachio. ‘Please return then,’ he said. He countersigned a ledger in red ink, and turned to the tall desk that dominated the room. He sat on a high stool and resumed writing.

  Swan looked at Di Brachio, who had turned bright red. The Venetian cleared his throat.

  ‘You expected something more?’ asked the priest.

  ‘I am no man’s servant,’ Di Brachio said.

  The priest shrugged. ‘Take it up with His Eminence, then,’ he said. ‘You thugs give us a bad name. I’m cutting expenses. Twenty-five ducats for each of you? My clerks can live a year on that much money.’

  Swan thought, in the privacy of his head, that he had once been able to live five years on so much money.

  Di Brachio pursed his lips. He drew his sword, and the clerks riffled like fowls in a farmyard. But he didn’t threaten. He simply threw the notched blade down on the work table.

  ‘See the blade?’ he said. ‘Ruined – fighting Turks. I can’t buy a new blade for twenty-five ducats.’

  The priest shrugged. ‘That is between you and the cardinal,’ he said, and his voice had some of the whine of a cat’s. ‘I gather you are very … close.’

  Di Brachio grew still for a moment. Then he picked up his sword. ‘Have you ever seen the bodies they pull out of the Tiber after three days?’ he said quietly, and the priest stepped back. Swan thought of Ser Marco’s admonition and moved between them. Besides, when the good father had opened a drawer to fetch out the ledger with its red-inked entries, Swan had seen a great deal of gold sitting in a bag.

  ‘Ah, Father, we have been too long on a ship. You are only doing your duty.’ He bowed, his right hand searching behind him, hidden, he hoped, in the folds of his cloak. His hand closed on the bag, and he bowed again. ‘I, for one, would be happy to take my twenty-five ducats and rejoice in them.’

  The priest rubbed his wrists with his thumbs and wished for God to strike them dead, but after long seconds of inaction, he opened a small box on his tall desk and began to count out ducats.

  Di Brachio followed him, holding his notched sword. ‘I wonder sometimes, Father,’ he said quietly.

  The priest looked up.

  ‘I wonder if killing a priest feels any different from killing a Turk or a footpad,’ he said. ‘I am not a servant, nor am I a thug, nor can you make your puerile assertions about my relationship with the cardinal without immediate consequence. Do you understand me, Padre?’

  The priest drew himself up. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said, but his voice indicated how unsure he was.

  Di Brachio nodded. ‘Sometimes, men make mistakes about where they are powerful, and where they are weak. A few months ago, I foolishly acted as if I had power in Venice, and I was lucky not to be killed. But here in this house, Father, you are to me like a louse between my fingers.’ Di Brachio’s voice hissed slightly, and he placed the point of his sword against the priest’s belly. ‘If I did have a special relationship with His Eminence, what kind of fool would you be to twit me with it?’

  The other clerks were frozen. Two of them tried to slip past Swan up the stairs, and he dissuaded them with a single roll of his shoulders.

  ‘You thought you could insult me to my face. There, now you know you are wrong. Here’s a choice, priest. Understand your place, and we can yet be friends. Or – try and take some action against me, and see. See what happens, my friend.’ The Venetian swished his blade through the air and lightly swatted the priest on the arse.

  Swan would have laughed, except that he thought that Di Brachio was being foolish. It never ceased to amaze him how often the older man accused him of foolish behaviour, only to indulge in his own.

  The priest finished counting out the money, his fingers trembling slightly, and Di Brachio stood like a predator denied his prey and glared at Swan, who had dropped the bag into the top of his right boot and then had to walk very carefully not to lose it.

  ‘You may,’ hissed the priest, ‘find that I, too, have friends.’

  ‘Friends? A creature like you?’ Di Brachio mocked.

  Together they climbed the stairs from the clerks’ level to the main floor, and when they’d reached their rooms, Swan drew Di Brachio into his, opened the bag, and dumped it on the bed.

  ‘Greedy bastard,’ Swan said.

  Di Brachio looked at the gold – almost a hundred French francs – and laughed. ‘You just stole money from your own employer,’ he said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘It was right there,’ he said. ‘It’s the Church’s money – and thus it belongs to every Christian. You and I are Christians, and more than that, we just fought for the faith. These are our legitimate wages.’

  ‘By God, Swan, now I know your father really was a cardinal,’ Di Brachio said. He sat on Swan’s bed and counted the coins into two piles. ‘Di Brescia is about somewhere. Shall we find the lawyers and go out?’

  ‘Madame Lucrescia’s?’ asked Swan.

  ‘Violetta – if she is even still there – will cost you every ducat in that sack,’ said the Venetian.

  Swan smiled. ‘As for that – I’ll wager she’s a Christian, too.’

  ‘Eh, dog-face, stop pushing your nose between her tits and listen to me,’ Giovanni Accudi insisted. He’d missed his friends very much, and was determined, as he put it, to drink every cup of wine he’d missed in six long months. He was drunk, and very happy to have Swan back, and intensely interested in explaining to Swan the ramifications of the fall of Constantinople in terms of trade.

  Swan’s attention was elsewhere because his evening had been made at the very outset when, at the very door of Madame Lucrescia’s, Violetta had wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. He might know, inside his heart, that she was a courtesan – a whore – and that this greeting might be lavished on every paying customer, or perhaps just one an evening, but he treated her joy as real and she, in turn, lavished more of it on him, climbing on his lap at the first opportunity and glaring at Madame Lucrescia herself when she came to ask the blonde girl to use some discretion.

  ‘Violetta, dear, we are not that kind of house.’ She smiled at Swan. ‘I’m afraid she is quite smitten with you, my young Englishman. We hear also that you are now very rich.’

  Swan laughed, rising and disentangling himself from Violetta, who was dressed diaphanously in something that had at least nodded in the direction of classical antiquity – a single layer of linen decorated with rosettes of silk ribbon. The linen hid neither the muscles of her body nor the sheer warmth she emitted on a winter’s day in Rome, and t
hat warmth travelled through Swan’s hands and chest and penetrated his heart. So he squeezed her hand as he put her on her feet, and he gave Madame Lucrescia his best bow.

  ‘I am distressed, madame, to report that while I may have saved a fortune for another, none of it has – how can I say it? Stuck to me.’ He smiled at her from under his lashes.

  ‘Heroic and penniless? By the Virgin, messire, we have plenty of you already in Italy. Why didn’t you stay in England?’ But she leaned over. ‘Bessarion is a friend of mine. I hear things.’

  She curtsied graciously. ‘Violetta, I grant you this gentleman as your own domain for the evening – the whole evening. You may be his Queen of Love. But mark me, my girl – we do not sit in laps in this house, nor engage in more than a blushing hand squeeze until we reach certain rooms.’

  Violetta flushed, and for a moment Swan feared her revolt. But then she dipped her own straight-backed courtesy. ‘Yes, madame,’ she said meekly.

  When the owner disappeared into the crowd of papal courtiers, Violetta leaned against him. ‘She’s not so bad, but she’s the very princess of liars. If she’d married Sforza, her daughter would have had to be named Hypocritica.’

  Di Brachio threw his head back and his laugh rang like a bell. ‘Demoiselle, you have more wit than many a fine lady I have known.’

  Swan had no idea what they were on about.

  ‘The Duke of Milan’s daughter is Hypolita, like the Queen of the Amazons,’ Violetta said. ‘It all but ruins my little wit to have to explain myself.’

  ‘Leave the Englishman and marry me, demoiselle,’ said Di Brachio.

  Violetta smiled and was very beautiful indeed. ‘What a wonderful compliment, messire! But surely you desire a very chaste and religious wife.’

  ‘I do?’ Di Brachio asked. ‘It seems unlikely.’

  ‘I fear that otherwise she might be very bored indeed,’ Violetta said. Her smile should have taken any sting out. And made the Venetian laugh again. But he did not, and he leaned towards her, hissing slightly as he did when angry.

  ‘Listen, my filly,’ he said, ‘I might surprise you.’

  She lowered her lashes. ‘Messire, I can well imagine that you are a man full of surprises, and if I had a younger brother—’

  Di Brescia stepped between them out of the air. ‘She means no harm,’ he said, gripping Di Brachio’s sword arm. Violetta was as white as the parchment of a fancy sword scabbard. Swan, who’d drunk too much wine, went from a vague jealousy that his best friend was flirting with his chosen girl to fear that she was about to be cut to ribbons before his eyes.

  ‘Oh, messire,’ Violetta said, hand to chest. ‘It is just wit. Poor wit.’

  Di Brachio turned. ‘I disgust myself,’ he said. He bowed. ‘The demoiselle did nothing untoward. I am unfit for company.’ He turned and stomped off.

  Swan looked at Violetta, and at Di Brachio’s back. Sobriety returned in a host of memories, and he pressed against her, just for a moment – to remember the feel of her body if he didn’t manage to return. ‘He’s my best friend,’ he said sourly, and walked away after the retreating back of the Venetian.

  Di Brachio walked straight out the open door of the great hall and into the night, leaving his cloak and hat. He was well ahead of Swan, and Swan almost lost the young man in the first three turnings of the streets outside Madame Lucrescia’s house, but great houses had cressets burning outside, and Di Brachio’s bare head gleamed in the light as he wandered out into the Via dei Coronari.

  Swan ran across a broad square littered with fallen remnants of ancient buildings and caught the Venetian as he climbed the steps of Ponte San Angelo. All the houses had been pulled down at the time of the papal jubilee, and there was a dangerous wilderness of rubble and unfinished work. It was not a place where any sane man walked alone.

  Even as Swan approached from behind, shadows detached themselves from the muddy darkness under the bridge and ran, light footed, up the steps between him and his friend.

  There were two lamps burning at the top of the steps by the statue of St Peter. Swan saw Di Brachio silhouetted against the left-hand lamp, and saw him turn as the men behind rushed him, and then Swan’s own head was down as he sprinted up the steps himself, sword and dagger in hand.

  There was no pause, no demand for money – the men rushed the Venetian, and he stood his ground at the top of the steps and killed one, threw his body at the others, and then put his back against the lamp-post. The other five began to close in.

  Then the rearmost man heard Swan’s feet and turned.

  Di Brachio attacked, a great slashing blow from a high guard against the bridgeward men, and a sudden flickering lunge like the pounce of a cat to kill the man who had turned to face Swan.

  Swan jumped up, climbing three steps in a leap, and got his own back to the bridge’s wall – bound a man’s sword with his own. The man was left handed, and he had a small shield, and Swan thrust his dagger into the man’s shield, cut him in the forearm over the rim, stomped on his extended foot, and muscled his dagger into the man’s bicep. The man’s defence collapsed and Swan hit him in the face with his sword-hilt, stepped behind him and, as he collapsed forward, kneed him in the face and threw him over his left leg and over the collapsed parapet into the water.

  All that in the time it would take a monk to say the words ‘Pater noster qui est in coelus’.

  Di Brachio fell at his feet, stretched full length on the timbers of the bridge, and Swan cut a great mezzano from right to left at head height, brushing the two immediate assailants back off his friend.

  Di Brachio rolled to his feet, swearing like a sailor.

  The survivors had used the moment’s pause to realise that there were only two of them left now, and they turned to run.

  Di Brachio threw his sword – hard, and overarm, so that it made a torchlit pinwheel and slammed into the farther man’s neck. It wasn’t spectacular – the sword didn’t hit point first – but it had enough power and weight to make a great wound, and the fellow went sprawling on the planks, screaming, both arms reaching for the back of his head.

  Swan cursed his tight scarlet hose and ran after the closer man, who was scrawny, short and partially bald. He ran with a limp, and Swan caught him in ten steps. The man turned – and fell to his knees.

  ‘Spare me, master!’ he said. His eyes gleamed dully, like old metal.

  Behind Swan, the man who’d taken the sword in the back of his head screamed as his questing fingers discovered that there was a big piece of his skull missing and he was a dead man, and then his screams stopped abruptly as Di Brachio finished him.

  ‘I could serve you – I’d be a slave. Oh, God, messire, please …’

  Swan thought a thousand things in a second – how he’d spared the young Turk, and how this man had intended to kill and then rob Di Brachio. What Christ intended. What he would think of himself tomorrow. Whether Violetta was yet available. The eyes that watched him were bereft of anything like innocence.

  He ran the man through, and kicked him off his point. He felt neither joy nor horror. Killing street trash was no longer incident. It was a professional decision, and he left the corpse and ran back to Di Brachio, but the Venetian hadn’t taken a bad wound, merely a hard cut to the side below his dagger hand.

  ‘You are a fool,’ Swan said fondly.

  ‘Am I?’ Di Brachio said. ‘Sweet Christ, that hurts.’ He shrugged. ‘But I no longer feel like killing an innocent girl. That part is all better.’ He turned. ‘Did yours get away?’

  ‘No,’ Swan said.

  They sat in the main room of Madame Lucrescia’s and debated how long Pope Nicholas would live and who might be Pope after him. Accudi thought that Bessarion would be Pope, and Di Brescia laughed him to scorn. Swan tried to listen while scanning the room for Violetta, but she was gone – riding another customer, no doubt. He found himself angry. It made no sense to be so angry – he’d made his choice and chased after Di Brachio – but there it was. He
couldn’t listen to Di Brescia’s mock insults, or to Accudi’s ribald comments.

  Like Di Brachio before him, he rose to leave.

  ‘You came back!’ Madame Lucrescia said, placing a hand on his chest. ‘I sent her to her room. She was going to make a scene.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you in love with your Venetian?’

  Swan laughed. ‘Not that way,’ he said. He smiled, though.

  She nodded. ‘I thought not. But – never mind. I will send a slave for Violetta, and you may resume your evening, although if these two gentlemen do not stop fighting …’ She swept past Swan to where Di Brescia was sitting on top of his much less martial peer.

  ‘Messires!’ she shouted.

  Di Brescia raised his head. ‘Ah, che cosare! Let me write you a poem right after I shove this ink-stained cretin’s words down his throat.’

  ‘Help me, Englishman!’ shouted Accudi.

  Swan couldn’t tell whether they were in play or in earnest – they’d drunk enough wine to float a Genoese galley. But he helped two brawny servants to separate them, and as he rose from kneeling on the floor he heard a most unfortunate sound from his hose, and Violette giggled.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If I am to be your Queen of Love, you are not allowed to run away.’

  He looked down into her remarkable eyes – slightly mismatched, large, liquid, of an indefinable colour between blue and purple.

  ‘And you might wish to place your back to the wall. Or just follow me to my room.’ She dropped her lashes.

  His questing hand found that there was a rip in his hose as broad as four fingers. Someone’s knife or sword-point had scored. His arse was showing.

  He smiled at her, and glanced at Di Brachio, who looked as if he was going to sleep. Only after a moment’s attention did Swan realise that the Venetian was bleeding heavily – that there was blood on his chair and on the floor. His head was lolling.

  Violette was not the kind of girl who fainted. Instead, she waved to a slave. ‘Receiving room,’ she said. ‘No, kitchen. Get a doctor.’

  Swan took a ducat from his purse. ‘Go to the Bishop of Ostia’s palazzo,’ he said, ‘and ask for Master Claudio. Run. All the way,’ He helped another slave hoist the wounded man, and Di Brachio let out an uncharacteristic groan. Swan ran with him all the way to the kitchen, where plainly clad women cleared the great work table by throwing everything – including a half-butchered lamb – on the floor.