Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Four Read online

  ‘Tell the lads we will pay them tonight. In the castle courtyard with the Despot’s permission. If it is lacking, in the yard of the monastery.’

  Clemente’s grin matched Swan’s. ‘Yes, Illustrio.’

  Four hours later the men were paid. Columbino and Orietto, Di Silva and Kendal and half a dozen other men sat around the Despot’s table with Grazias and Dukas and another officer, the blondest Greek Swan had ever seen. Kendal was teaching the Greeks to play piquet.

  Bembo was chatting with the Despot.

  ‘You know his wife is Florentine?’ Bembo asked.

  Swan felt a slight chill. ‘I didn’t know.’

  Bembo nodded thoughtfully. ‘I am to take you, with your men-at-arms as extra marines, to Trevisan. The Turkish fleet is at sea.’

  ‘By the saints,’ Swan swore. ‘I have had enough fighting this last year for three lifetimes.’

  Di Silva nodded and drank more wine.

  Bembo smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps. You are the heroes of Belgrade. But my dear Englishman, you may never again see a fleet with papal vessels, Genoese galleys and Venetian galleys all going together against the Turk. The alliance is so fragile that it might blow away on the wind. The Pope has threatened to disestablish your Hospitallers because they advised diplomacy with the Mamluks in Egypt.’ Bembo favoured them with a wry smile and shook his head. ‘A great war for the saving of Europe,’ he said.

  The Despot laughed aloud.

  ‘So then,’ Kendal said, oblivious, ‘then you play again.’ His Italian was so good that Bembo looked twice.

  Dukas laughed. ‘But you have already scored points with this hand,’ he said.

  Kendal drank wine. ‘That’s the beauty of piquet,’ he said. ‘You use the same cards but you use them different ways.’

  ‘But always the same result,’ muttered Orietto.

  And later, Swan sat in his room with Bembo across the table. Both men had reached the stage where they were ‘bleary’. Swan was looking out over the sea; he had a small balcony, very Italian.

  He had just explained everything he knew of the Spinelli plot, as he thought of it, to Bembo.

  ‘But where would all that money go?’ Bembo asked. ‘I mean, for your notion to be sane, than the Pope must have a massive throne of stolen gold. A harem larger than the Sultans. And no one thinks that of Calixtus. It makes no sense.’

  ‘Alessandro,’ Swan said. ‘We are both men of the world.’

  ‘None perhaps more worldly than we,’ Bembo said, and took a drink. ‘So worldly that I feel that I need to tell you that my wife is pregnant.’

  Swan paused with his hand reaching for the wine pitcher. ‘Delightful,’ he murmured, because Bembo, in addition to being his best friend, was a touchy bastard and a deadly hand.

  ‘You have no further comment to add?’ Bembo asked aggressively.

  Swan thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said.

  Bembo squirmed in his seat. He seemed on the very edge of the sort of confidence that would disturb him later, so Swan leaned back.

  ‘The Pope’s assassin killed a banker in Mistra. Ponder that.’

  ‘Christ on the cross,’ Bembo said, distracted. ‘Calixtus doesn’t have an assassin. He is actually a good man. That is why he is so dangerous as Pope.’

  Swan was looking out to sea, thinking that he was really very clever. And then it occurred to him that a man could imagine he was working for the Pope, and not really be working for the Pope. Out at sea, lights twinkled. The stars were magnificent.

  ‘The assassin could work for anyone,’ Swan said.

  ‘My point exactly,’ Bembo said. ‘And there may be no money. Where does that leave your plot?’

  Swan cursed. ‘Then why is Loredan in Rome?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, because people are dying like flies and someone is trying to undermine the Medici and, with this fleet at sea, all the markets are vulnerable. The Peace of Lodi is vulnerable. Italy is vulnerable. I believe you, English. I think that there is someone using the papal machinery to move puppets on the stage. The question is, who?’ Bembo allowed his chair to rock forward until the front legs slammed on the stone floor with a boom. ‘I am drunk. We are already late for the rendezvous. Can your people sail tomorrow?’

  ‘I think, based on the wine and the gold, we will have to wait until the day after tomorrow,’ Swan said.

  Bembo nodded. ‘Why hurry to a battle? Stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘At least you have fathered a child,’ Swan said. Then he froze.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Bembo said. ‘Although I have friends who will never believe it.’ He smiled, and rose unsteadily. ‘Christ, Thomas. The sun is rising.’

  ‘I want to go to Venice,’ Swan said suddenly. ‘To hell with Trevisan and to hell with the Pope and the Turks. I’d like to live my life, father a few dozen children and watch them grow up. Maybe have an orange tree.’

  Bembo was holding himself up with his strong arms. ‘Umar,’ he called softly, and his servant came and put a shoulder under his reaching arm. He winked at Swan, who winked back, and Bembo was half carried out of the room.

  ‘Don’t drop him,’ Swan said.

  It took them five days to cross the Aegean, island-hopping east and south past Athens and Delos, watching the horizon for sails on a sea that seemed to have been emptied. They made an all-night sail from just east of Delos, passed a chain of islands in the dark, drank the last of the water aboard in the morning, and raised the coast of Chios at noon. Bembo’s navigator looked relieved.

  ‘A Venetian secret,’ Bembo said. ‘All of you gentlemen are sworn to secrecy.’

  The decks of the five galleys were heavy with Swan’s men-at-arms and all his English archers. Only the pages had been left to watch the horses, and the gunner to watch the guns, with Grazias in command. The only page aboard was Clemente; Marco Corner had been appointed to a ship, as he had just received a letter from the Ten.

  Swan watched Chios grow and then fall away, and the familiar coast of Lesvos appear over the bow. The commander of the Venetian contingent, an octogenarian who sprang about his rigging like a much younger man, ordered them into the Bay of Kalloni for water. Swan watched the familiar headlands go by and thought of various men and women he knew. Of his very first mission for Bessarion. Of the great Christian fleet he’d seen in these very waters.

  ‘I was here three years ago,’ he said.

  ‘I remember,’ Bembo said.

  The word at the port of Kalloni was that Mytilene was still held by the Gattelussi, and that the Pope’s fleet was at Lemnos, or Rhodes, and the Turks were attacking Mythymna. They took on water and the Venetians allowed all their oarsmen ashore and gave them exercise; almost all the rowers were free men. None deserted.

  ‘Two days to Mytilene,’ Swan said. ‘We could ride there in a few hours.’

  ‘No,’ Bembo said. ‘We couldn’t. We have galleys.’

  So they spent the next morning re-lading the galleys and getting all the rowers aboard, and then and only then did they row into the light breeze all the way down the bay. Then they went out into the offing, weathered the long headland, and crawled north and east around into the channel between Asia and Lesvos, and finally could raise their sails and run north.

  They were low on the water again, and the sun was just setting behind the mountains of Lesvos when they saw the great fortress of Mytilene against the sky. There were great beaches on either side of the fortress, and both beaches were crowded with shipping, and there was a long line of galleys anchored under the guns of the fortress; Bembo stood in the bow and counted them. He was just counting the papal galleys when Swan looked at him.

  ‘Sweet Mary, mother of God,’ Swan said. ‘I know where the money is.’

  The End of Part IV

  Tom Swan and the Last Spartans will be completed in the next instalment. But the adventure has farther to run, and Tom Swan is not done yet.

  Also by Christian Cameron

  The Chivalry Series
r />   The Ill-Made Knight

  The Long Sword

  The Green Count

  The Tyrant Series

  Tyrant

  Tyrant: Storm of Arrows

  Tyrant: Funeral Games

  Tyrant: King of the Bosporus

  Tyrant: Destroyer of Cities

  Tyrant: Force of Kings

  The Long War Series

  Killer of Men

  Marathon

  Poseidon’s Spear

  The Great King

  Salamis

  Rage of Ares

  Tom Swan and the Head of St George Parts One–Six

  Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade Parts One–Seven

  Tom Swan and the Last Spartans Parts One–Five

  Other Novels

  Washington and Caesar

  Alexander: God of War

  Writing as Miles Cameron

  The Traitor Son Cycle

  The Red Knight

  The Fell Sword

  The Dread Wyrm

  A Plague of Swords

  The Fall of Dragons

  Copyright

  An Orion ebook

  First published as an ebook in Great Britain in 2017 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Christian Cameron 2017

  The right of Christian Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 6588 0

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