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

  ‘But you are a killer …’ Alberti said.

  ‘This topic is closed,’ Swan said sharply. ‘I wish to change the subject.’

  ‘I can still take her working off of you,’ Alberti said. ‘Her—curse.’

  Swan waved this away, although despite himself, he was interested. ‘You have not filed a report in many months,’ he said. He’d considered all the lines he might use.

  ‘What sort of report?’ the maestro demanded.

  ‘The kind you sent to Cyriaco,’ Swan said, watching intently for the man’s response.

  Alberti froze. ‘I sent to Cyriaco …’ Alberti paused as the full implication sunk in. ‘But Cyriaco is dead! You?’ he asked.

  ‘I have that honour.’ Swan nodded. ‘My master would like to receive reports about Rimini. And my master has in mind projects that could result in your recall to Rome.’ He thought of what Cesare said about Alberti. ‘The Liars’ Club misses you.’

  Alberti’s face now bore a cold fury. ‘You – you are to be my minder?’ But he looked out of the window. ‘The stars are out of alignment this morning and I am rude.’

  ‘I have that effect on people,’ Swan said.

  Alberti laughed. ‘Tell me, do you think the common people of Rome spoke good Latin?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I expect they could when they wanted to and other times they had their own dialect. Like most people.’

  ‘What a charming theory. Did you make it up, or would you like to try an authority on me?’ Alberti was again patronising.

  Alberti’s vanity and his pride pointed out his flaws like arrows in St Sebastian. Swan wondered whether the man had any friends. But he allowed himself to be stung. He fancied himself a good scholar and not merely a soldier.

  ‘You have read Plato?’ Swan asked.

  ‘I could write Plato,’ Alberti answered.

  ‘And Xenophon?’ Swan asked.

  Alberti nodded. ‘Again, I could write Xenophon. Indeed, I have – my book on family matters shows my knowledge of his text, which men used to attribute to—’

  ‘And would you say that the quality of Attic grammar and rhetoric is the same in both?’ Swan asked.

  Alberti’s voice oozed fake humility. ‘It is not my place to judge the ancients. They were greater men than we.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Really? Their navigation wasn’t up to much, and they didn’t have gunpowder. Or good ship construction. Or the orologia. The clock.’ He smiled with condescension. ‘And I’ve read De Re Militari since I was a boy and I’m not sure they knew much about making war, either.’

  Alberti reeled back as if struck. ‘You are a barbarian!’ he said. But he smiled. ‘And a heretic!’

  Swan nodded. ‘A mere man of arms, Maestro. The cardinal is willing to consider the stipend you had before. Are you?’

  ‘I need another … three ducats a month. To make ten.’ Alberti’s greed seemed almost comical beside his vanity.

  Swan was inwardly amused that Alberti cost the cardinal less than a single Greek stradiote.

  ‘I’m sure something can be arranged,’ he said smoothly.

  ‘I will write a new cipher,’ Alberti said. ‘Does the cardinal read my reports? And how was he not elected Pope?’

  ‘He didn’t want to be Pope.’ Swan smiled. ‘You make ciphers?’ he asked.

  ‘The best in the world. Unbreakable.’ Alberti nodded. ‘Have you read my books?’ he asked.

  Swan shook his head. ‘My friend Cesare recommends your book on painting, but I have never had a copy.’

  Alberti smiled. ‘Cesare Acudo? Ah – a fine man. A wit. A fine Latinist. And a rake-hell.’

  Swan kept his smile inward. Alberti accommodated himself to new realities very quickly, and he’d clearly decided that they were allies.

  ‘Could you have the new cipher by tomorrow?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Do I get my pay rise?’ asked Alberti.

  ‘I’m sure something can be arranged,’ Swan said.

  Before he mounted, his eyes met Constantine’s.

  ‘Did it go well?’ the Greek asked.

  Swan nodded. ‘Better than I expected,’ he admitted.

  Back at the castello, Swan proceeded to the main business of his mission to Rimini. He met with Malatesta’s steward and with Montorio, and under their direction mustered six lances of a small-time condotierre named Columbino di Sienna, whose contract with the Wolf had expired. He was a tall, handsome young man with a dark-skinned face and jet-black hair.

  Montorio nodded. ‘You look good for a man who was up half the night,’ he said.

  ‘I admit that I had not expected to find Rimini so exciting,’ Swan said.

  ‘You may find it more exciting yet. Do you hear me?’ Montorio turned and looked him in the face. The warning was explicit. Swan had not stayed alive by ignoring friendly warnings.

  ‘I hear you, my friend.’ Swan bowed. ‘Tell me what you think of this young man.’

  ‘One of the best,’ Montorio said. ‘He will be famous or dead.’ He bowed. ‘Be … awake.’ He gathered his sword bearer and swept away.

  ‘I beg your pardon for the many indelicate questions,’ Swan said, on being introduced to the ‘captain’ of a very small company. Swan had dressed up to be an impressive employer, and wore a fine doublet and a red velvet gown.

  He liked Columbino di Sienna’s intelligent, honest face, and hoped the man lived up to it.

  Ser Columbino bowed. ‘Mustering is always indelicate,’ he said. ‘The money washes away all the stains. Ask away.’

  ‘Why is the Lord of Rimini releasing you?’ Swan asked.

  Ser Columbino shrugged, looking at the twenty-four horsemen sitting in the courtyard in their full harness and tack. The six elmeti wore the full plate harness of knights. Their squires wore heavy armour – a small fortune – but did not have armoured horses or closed face helmets. Behind them were six lightly armoured crossbowmen. They were well mounted and every man had a sallet and a breast- and backplate, and they looked very capable. What Swan liked best was the four extra horses that each ‘fourth man’, the pages, led. These were good lances, with fine Milanese harnesses and good mounts.

  Ser Columbino was in his full armour, but with a golden straw hat as wide as his armoured shoulders on his head. ‘There is no war just now.’ He smiled. ‘I think we were hired when it looked as if my lord was going to fight the Pope.’

  ‘I may be going as far as Vienna – or farther,’ Swan said. ‘We might face the Turks.’

  Ser Columbino’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Ah – I had heard such a thing. This would be magnificent for my reputation. But I would require to be paid for the loss of our horses. Really – all my money and my estate are mortgaged to the Venetians for these men and their horses.’

  Swan walked around, playing with buckles and patting horses.

  ‘You may have your men dismount,’ he said.

  ‘You fight?’ Ser Columbino asked. ‘Yourself?’

  Swan smiled. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘When I have to.’

  Ser Columbino nodded. ‘Your man told us that you fought the Turks,’ he said.

  ‘There was nowhere to run away to,’ Swan said, and they both laughed. Swan thought of the darkness under the walls of Rhodes and all but choked on his laugh.

  The whole troop dismounted. The spring sun was hot and the men were sweating. They had worked hard – their horses shone, their armour was brilliant, and Swan saw buckles done up that would seldom be buckled on campaign. Even the bronze buckles were polished.

  He also noted that one lance – the biggest man’s – was less polished than the others, and that the man shifted more. His crossbowman was unshaven. Swan raised the off rear foot of one of the horses held by the man’s page.

  ‘This shoe is loose,’ he said mildly.

  Ser Columbino looked horrified. The big man-at-arms grunted. ‘Stop playacting you’re a Venetian providatore.’

  ‘Pardon me?’ Swan asked in his best Order of St John parade ground voice
.

  ‘You heard me,’ the man insisted. ‘It’s fucking hot.’

  Swan sighed. ‘Has Messire ever fought the Turks?’ he asked.

  The man didn’t even bother to shrug. ‘I’ve fought everything,’ he said.

  ‘So you know what will happen to your squire if his horse loses a shoe in a retreat?’ Swan insisted.

  The man looked to the sky, as if asking heaven to bear witness to this foolishness.

  ‘He was one of my father’s best men. I beg your pardon,’ Ser Columbino said.

  Swan shrugged. ‘I am but a servant,’ he said. ‘But if you are to be my men-at-arms from here to Belgrade, I need to trust you.’ He turned so suddenly he took the big man off guard. ‘All of you,’ he said, and then smiled. ‘Don’t fuck around with me, and we’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yes, Your Mightiness,’ the big man replied, unimpressed.

  Swan sighed.

  ‘Ser Columbino, I like your men very much.’ He smiled at the big man. ‘If we do not see eye to eye, you can always find new employment in Venice.’

  Venice in peacetime was incredibly stingy. The threat was obvious; Ser Columbino winced. Swan nodded. He drew breath to start talking terms, and the Demoiselle Iso appeared in the courtyard, wearing a very demure long gown and a magnificent headdress that was singularly inappropriate for midday. She was magnificent, in an intentionally impractical way.

  ‘Will there be jousting?’ she asked breathlessly. Two African girls, her slaves, followed uncertainly, watching the soldiers with unconcealed hesitancy. An Italian duenna followed, picking her way across the cobbles and avoiding the horse manure with her hem and her fine shoes. She had enough breeding to bob a curtsy to Swan and to Ser Columbino.

  The two gentlemen returned the courtesy. Swan was thinking of some piece of wit when Ser Columbino grinned.

  ‘I have heard that Messire Suane is a fine lance,’ he said.

  ‘When my father employs new men, he always makes them joust,’ Iso said.

  Peter made the face he kept for complete, utter disgust and wagged a hand at his penis as if to suggest that Swan was being led by his.

  Swan bowed. He had no choice, on the stage of chivalry.

  ‘Perhaps we might arrange some tilting, as you are all in harness? I can be in mine in half an hour.’ He looked at Peter, who rolled his eyes. Peter spoke to one of the lord’s men-at-arms and trotted back.

  ‘Tiltyard’s all ours,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure Pater will not mind,’ Iso said, as if she were a breathless flirt and not a mature woman. ‘I’ll just send Donna Silvia to arrange everything.’ She smiled at her duenna.

  As soon as he reached the sixth floor, Peter dumped all his arming clothes in a pile on his bed. ‘She’s up to something,’ he said.

  Swan shook his head. ‘I never would have guessed.’

  Half an hour later, when Ser Columbino’s troop entered the lists – the permanent lists maintained by the Lord of Rimini for his men-at-arms – they found Swan already in his harness and on his warhorse, waiting. Iso sat with her maids and two other women he didn’t know, in the stands above the lists.

  Peter walked across the sand and spoke to Ser Columbino, who waved. And then, without a pause, he put his spurs to his mount.

  Swan had a lance in his hand, and he dropped it into his lance rest.

  Months with the Order had honed his jousting like all the rest of his skills, but Columbino di Sienna was a good lance, and they struck each other fairly, both lances broke, and both men rocked well back into their high-backed saddles.

  Swan finished his ride to the far end of the lists and saluted the next man-at-arms, a Spaniard.

  ‘Tommaso Suane,’ he said.

  ‘Don Juan di Silva,’ the man said, and bowed in the saddle.

  Swan rode back along the lists, clapped gauntlets with Ser Columbino, headed the other way – both men smiling at a good run – and drew up. Peter armed him with a new lance.

  ‘The Spaniard’s their best,’ Peter said. ‘I like him. Watch out for the stooping hawk.’

  Swan nodded, licked the sweat off the area under his nose and leaned down to have his face wiped with a towel. Peter flicked his visor closed and swatted him on the arse, to tell him he was good and his armour was all safe, and then he had nothing to see but the list and the man and horse at the far end.

  The Spaniard kept his lance erect as he rode. Swan knew what that meant – he would slam his lance down at the last moment – the swooping hawk. Back on Rhodes, Sir Kenneth, the Scottish knight, had shown him a trick …

  He used his knee to press his horse right against the barrier. The charger was superb – he burst into a gallop and seemed to skim the wooden wall beside his head as he flew down the course. Swan’s lance was in its rest, but just a little high, as if Swan intended to strike his adversary on the helmet crest or the visor.

  The Spaniard’s lance came down. His timing was superb – he meant to have the descending lance tip strike Swan in the left shoulder in a single continuous and irresistible motion that would also knock Swan’s lance low, spoiling his run.

  Swan dropped his point a fraction of an inch in the same tempo, turned the weapon physically in his lance rest and rose in his stirrups – all a recipe for being unhorsed, if your opponent struck his target.

  The effect was like voiding an opponent’s sword. The Spaniard’s lance expected resistance, found none, and went too low. The knight’s reflexes were spectacular – the moment he felt the lack of resistance he changed his seat and raised his lance. Swan’s rising lance caught the Spaniard in the centre of his breastplate.

  The Spaniard’s next move, fast as a snake, caught Swan’s left arm and twisted him in the saddle. His shoulder gave a flare of pain.

  His lance exploded under the combined force of the two moving horses and armoured men. Swan’s tip had held – the Spanish knight was stretched back over his horse’s rump, but the man was a magnificent jouster and despite his surprise and chagrin he kept his seat and even straightened as he rode down the lists.

  Again Swan turned. As he trotted back, Don Juan raised his visor and halted his courser.

  ‘Very pretty!’ he said in Castilian Italian. ‘I look forward to many further passages with you, sir!’

  Swan bowed in the saddle. ‘And I with you, Sir Knight,’ he said. ‘You do me too much honour. You are … superb.’

  Peter was rolling his eyes. ‘Archers do not tell each other how pretty they are, by the crucified Christ,’ he spat. ‘Here’s the lard-arse. By the way, if you weren’t so keen on always having the last word, this man might like you better.’ Peter made a motion with his chin. ‘Ladies watching,’ he said.

  Peter poured water into his mouth, wiped his face and closed his visor. Swan couldn’t see the stands with the visor closed, but he had seen that there were more ladies. He liked a crowd. Still, he wasn’t sure how to handle the big man.

  At the moment the horses started forward, all plotting dropped away. His mind was blank, and his lance tip came down …

  Swan wasn’t – quite – punched from the saddle, but the blow made him reel. As he came back, he saluted the other man. ‘That one to you,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the big man – but he did manage a smile.

  He ran three more courses with the other men-at-arms – all Italians. No one was unhorsed; the youngest man-at-arms was thirty, and they were all good jousters. Swan was delighted with their prowess. And sore.

  Peter, disarming him, had other notions. ‘Fucking useless for fighting Turks,’ he said. ‘Or Englishmen,’ he went on.

  Swan didn’t feel like shrugging – his body hurt. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘It’s better than no test at all. It’s … symbolic.’

  Peter made his face disagreeing expression. ‘Have them chase our stradiotes over broken country for half a day,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll drop some arrows on them. The survivors can stay.’

  ‘Too much like real war,’ Swan said. The arm
harnesses came off, and he felt lighter and happier. Peter had placed a stool for him in a shady corner of the lists, and he was handing Clemente, the stable boy, each piece of harness. Clemente rubbed each one with oiled sheep’s wool, put each piece into its own bag and then placed them in a wicker basket.

  ‘I’d like to take the boy,’ Peter said.

  Clemente stiffened, his face a chaos of hope and fear.

  ‘Look at his back,’ Peter said.

  Swan turned, and saw the women sitting on the benches, watching the knights disarm. With them were the lord’s children, and possibly the lord himself. Too far away to be sure. He saw Iso’s headdress.

  He looked at Clemente.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘An hour at the butts,’ Peter said. ‘I don’t know if I can fix him, but pulling a bow will make that shoulder better.’

  ‘You plan to open an orphanage?’ Swan asked.

  Peter met his eye. ‘I’m tired of … of doing nothing. I am going to do something good.’ Peter’s Dutch doink nothink echoed.

  Swan sighed. ‘Well, we need a page. And he seems capable with the harness. We’d need a couple of ponies. And I expect there’s an indenture.’

  ‘Five ducats,’ Peter said.

  Swan frowned. ‘I could buy a pretty virgin for that,’ he said. He looked at the boy, who was horrified. ‘That was meant as a joke. Fine. Clemente, it is only fair to tell you that we’re going to a particularly nasty war.’

  ‘Christ crucified – show me a nice war,’ said Peter.

  ‘May I have … a wage? And livery?’ Clemente asked.

  Swan sighed. ‘I’m sure something can be arranged,’ he said.

  ‘If you found yourself a squire, you could collect the full pay of a lance,’ Peter said, and grinned. ‘And split it with me, of course.’

  Swan shrugged as the breastplate was peeled away. The inside was slick with sweat. ‘I could no doubt collect the pay and not have a squire at all,’ he said.

  Peter chortled. ‘No – you only cheat on big things, milor’.’

  Swan looked back at the women. His eye for detail had noted something odd. He couldn’t decide what it was. He noted that one of the women was the governess. And then Ser Columbino came up, also free of his armour.