Christian Cameron

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

Rosy-fingered dawn.

The very first hint of light spread from a vague grey to the merest hint of pink, like the touch of colour on a pretty girl’s face before she kisses you.

The three Turkish galleys had rowed all night to close the distance, and now they were at ramming speed, and the froth at their prows was tinted the same grey and salmon pink as the rest of the world, and the sea appeared to be a thousand shades of black, and behind the standing rigging of the enemy galleys, a flock of migrating waterbirds rode the air. Just for a moment, Tom Swan watched them and wished that he, too, could just fly away.

Behind him, on the command deck, Ser Marco was rattling orders as fast as a Florentine auctioneer sells a dead man’s household items.

Swan continued to arm himself.

He’d slept in his doublet, and he stripped out of it, the lace-on sleeves sticking to his arms because in his hurry he’d forgotten to unlace the wrists. He tore them off, and Peter had his arming coat ready. Once, it had been a handsome garment of wode-dyed elkhide quilted to silk, but now it had been soaked in successive layers of sweat and blood, his and others’, and it smelt.

He got it on anyway. He ran the central lace as fast as he could, missed a hole — and went back.

Experience had taught him a great deal about fighting in armour, and one thing he’d learned was to arm as carefully as possible, because a minor discomfort at the start meant screaming pain and lack of mobility in the fight.

He braced his feet as the galley heeled under him. The arsenali — the Venetian professional oarsmen, every man a citizen, every man armed — were awake, and rowing hard, but Ser Marco had just turned them very slightly to the east, towards the coast of Asia. Swan had no idea why, but Ser Marco was the best naval capitano he’d ever served with-

Swan laughed. Ser Marco was the only one he’d served with. He had to laugh at himself, sometimes.

‘He’s smilink, the gapitano,’ Peter said in his Flemish-accented English.

‘How’s the Spaniard?’ Swan asked. He had his right cuff tied, and went to lace his left.

‘Pfft! Toe nou! That one is stuffed with old rope and nails and leather and not guts. My friend Antonio and I have him vell enough in hand, eh?’ Peter grunted. ‘Get your breastplate on. I’ve been holdink it too long.’

Swan reversed into the breast and back, and Peter folded it closed around him, pulling a little too vigorously to get the mail of the voiders and the skirt in under the fauld.

‘Ouch!’ spat Swan when the front and back closed on his flesh, right through mail and leather.

‘Don’t be a girl,’ Peter said. ‘Even when you smell like one.’

For the first time that morning, Swan thought of Khatun Bengul — her ivory-white body, her breasts like the domes of a Greek church, the taste of her, the smell-

He could still smell her on his hair.

The timoneer was shouting at the arsenali, who were now pulling hard enough, three men to an oar, to grunt with every pull. The sound was obscene.

Irene and Andromache, the women from the acrobat troupe, began to stretch on the small open deck in the stern. Irene did a handstand.

The arsenali’s grunts quickened, and so did the pace of the oars.

The Turkish galleys were closer now — a long bowshot, and with the wind behind them.

‘Where’s the head?’ asked Nikephorus, in Greek.

Swan was trapped — Peter was lacing on his right arm harness, and he had nowhere to go. ‘It is in my armet,’ he said. ‘I — er — borrowed it.’

Nikephorus looked old and very serious. ‘When I found it gone, I assumed that you had betrayed us,’ he said. ‘Messer Peter here insisted that you would not abandon us, and went as far as to promise to kill you himself if you did.’

It is difficult to be persuasive while men are putting you into plate armour. Tom Swan gave it up as a bad job. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d make it.’ He managed to meet the Greek scholar’s mild eyes. ‘I’ll see you get your share. I was … too clever by half.’

Di Brachio barked a laugh. He jumped down from the command deck. ‘Say that again, English?’ he said. ‘I just want to hear you say it.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I was too clever. I usually am. When I’m tempted, I fall.’

Peter grabbed his left arm and began to fit it into the appropriate harness. He seemed to twist the arm farther than was necessary.

‘Ouch! Damn me, I need that arm!’ Swan spat.

Di Brachio leaned in close. ‘You endangered every one of us when you took the head — the head — into the presence of the Grand Turk. And you endangered us when you stopped to dip your wick with one of Omar Reis’s harem girls. Eh? My young master?’

Swan felt the red flush rising into his hair. ‘We’re here, aren’t we? And by the grace of God, messire, you know as well as I that Reis meant to betray us from the first, and not because of any antics of mine.’ He felt the rage of the young against the injustice of the old.

And the rage was fuelled by knowing in his heart that they were right.

‘Take the head, Master Nikephorus. Keep it safe.’ He hung his head. ‘I almost lost it, at the end,’ he admitted in a mumble.

Admitting to something was often a way to avert adult wrath. He’d learned that with his mother, and his real father, and all the other adults who looked for the best in him.

Di Brachio put an arm around his shoulder, pulled him tight, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I forgive you, you idiot. But you are going to die in one of these escapades.’

‘And none of us want to be around,’ Cesare di Brescia put in. He had his own armour on. He’d lost the ring of fat around his middle, and he looked like a statue of Poseidon or Zeus.

Giannis Trapitzou laughed. ‘Because it will be spectacular,’ he added. ‘And very destructive, I think.’

‘Why are we turning east?’ Swan asked. He wanted to ask ‘why are you all picking on me’, but experience had taught him that this only increased the adult feeding frenzy.

Di Brachio held up his left gauntlet, a magnificent example of the armourer’s art, with sliding plates over the wrist, individual finger assemblies, and a series of sliding rivets on the thumb for near-perfect articulation. Swan raised his left hand and Di Brachio rammed the gauntlet on a little too hard.

‘There’s a heavy current by the Asian shore,’ Di Brachio said. ‘But it runs north, not south, and I don’t know how he plans to use it.’ He paused. ‘You and the old man have a lot in common, little fox. He likes to surprise all of us with his plans. He doesn’t hold meetings, and he never explains. Since he’s still alive, men crawl over each other to serve on his ships.’

Swan grinned at the implied compliment.

‘You know what the difference between you is?’ Alessandro asked.

Swan grinned. ‘Thirty years?’ he asked.

‘Exactly,’ Di Brachio said.

Peter got the gorget closed around his neck and seated home on his breastplate, and then he hinged open the cheek plates of the armet and slid it on top of Swan’s head, pushing firmly until he could feel that Swan’s head was all the way into the deep ridges of padding, four layers of linen stuffed with sheep’s wool.

‘You’re ready,’ Peter said.

Irene smiled at him, and did a backflip right past them, her long legs flashing in the pink light, and the oarsmen on the nearest six benches found the breath to hoot, altogether, as her man’s shirt licked up above her belly button and then fell back without quite revealing an entire breast.

Alessandro sighed. ‘Women can be …’ he looked amused, ‘spectacular.’

A dozen arrows came aboard all together, and that was the end of conversation. Two sailors came by, unrolling the heavy leather and canvas awning that covered the rowers in action — and soaked up most of the arrow shafts. They were roping it home, and the acting troupe leapt to help them. Swan dropped his gauntlets and belayed a rope to a cleat set in the deck just above the first rowing bench, and the three men on the bench nodded their thanks at him as they pulled their great oar. Swan had noted before that one of the things that made war at sea so signally different from war on land was that the ship lived and died together — so men-at-arms, archers, sailors and oarsmen had a set of links connecting them that they would never have had ashore. Knights belayed ropes. Oarsmen fought like tigers.

Irene caught a heavy stay and climbed up it a few yards, caught another and jumped to the rail on the far side of the rowing deck. Swan would never have attempted such a feat of acrobatics. There she belayed more of the lines that held the heavy canvas housing.

Beyond her shoulders, the shore of Asia seemed to be rushing at them.

‘Prepare to turn to starboard!’ roared Ser Marco.

Most of the marines threw themselves flat. Swan had endured dozens of these high-speed turns in practice, and he grabbed the rail behind him.

The old man put the tiller down, and the starboard side oarsmen backed water, and the great galley turned like a child’s toy.

Swan’s gauntlets, forgotten for a moment, shot across the deck towards the waiting embrace of the sea.

Irene leaped — almost four English cloth yards — from the opposite rail. Her leap was almost down as the starboard rail was now far closer to the sea than the port-side rail — she landed on her toes, did a somersault, and stood, Swan’s gauntlets held aloft in her hands.

The oarsmen laughed. She presented them to Swan as the ship righted, at the end of her turn, and he took them. Her smile was triumphant and his was a little tight.

Behind them, the Turkish ships were slow in responding to the turn — which had clearly surprised them by going south into the current, and not north along the shore, using the current to add to the Nike’s speed. But they recovered, their archers changed sides, and in a minute the arrows came again, and the Turkish ships made their turns — and the Nike was slowing despite the best efforts of her crew.

For a dozen heartbeats the Turks closed the gap. A sailor took a cane arrow in the chest and fell by the mainmast, screaming.

Ser Marco stood by the helmsman like a statue in armour.

Peter had his great bow strung and ready, and now he went to the side, licked a finger, and took one of Antonio’s cane arrows from his Turkish-style quiver.

‘Eh, son of a whore, use your own fucking arrows,’ said the Italian archer.

Peter grunted, drew the arrow to the head, and loosed.

The Fleming’s arrow rose, seemed to hover at perihedron, and then fell to vanish into the nearest galley. Swan didn’t see where it struck, but the Italian spat.

‘All luck, you Dutch bastard,’ he said, but he slapped the big Fleming on the back.

Peter took another of Antonio’s arrows, and Giannis ran to get the Spaniard’s quiver, which was under the opposite scupper. ‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘I saw the Turks use … something to extend …’ He loosed again. The arrow seemed to vanish — it leaped off the bow faster than Swan thought possible.

‘Another hit? Really, I think this cannot all be luck,’ Antonio said. ‘Let me try with one of my own arrows, hey, cocksucker?’ He drew his Turkish bow all the way to his ear, the way Peter drew, and his arrow leaped away. The other marines cheered.

‘Good way to break a bow,’ Giannis said, dropping the Spaniard’s quiver by Peter. He latched his crossbow and tossed a bolt at the nearest Turk.

Behind them, the Turks hit the current.

An arrow struck Swan atop his right shoulder, but it was the very edge of its range and it sprang away.

The three Turks went to fast ramming speed. The sound of their drums rose like thunder, and they began to close in like raptors in the moment they hover before the talons strike home.

The Nike’s timoneer looked over his shoulder at his captain, but there was no order to increase speed. The capitano was smiling, not with insane ferocity, but with a calm that made Swan want to leap on the command deck and ask what is it you know?

The tempo of the Turkish strokes increased in a magnificent crescendo, and all three ships closed to javelin range.

Now all the ships’ marines and archers were exchanging shafts as quickly as they could draw and loose. The Turkish professionals returned three shafts for one on their prey. The Venetians were brave and had better armour, and their plate cuirasses and heavy helmets kept them in the fight, because the Turks lacked nothing in volume, power or speed. One by one the Venetian archers were shot down — Antonio took an arrow in the right arm, Giovanni took one in the nose, and finally Peter was alone, his hands and arms almost blurred with the speed of his loosing. He was using his own heavy shafts now.

An arrow took Swan in the helmet, and the diamond-shaped head cut right through the good Milanese steel and hung there — but didn’t go through the padding beneath. Another hit him in the breastplate, and then a third, and both punched through the plate like an awl through heavy leather, but couldn’t penetrate the mail and leather underneath.

Swan’s Turkish bow was right there. He shook the gauntlet off his right hand, took a shaft from the Spaniard’s quiver and loosed it almost unaimed into the vast maw of the Turkish galley ranging alongside, just three oars’ lengths away and trying to draw even. He saw Omar Reis amidships and his next shaft went with intent. One of the janissaries saw him aim and the return volley from the Turkish ship caught him repeatedly. He was hit so many times he was knocked down. His head collided with the deck hard, and the shaft in his helmet splintered and wrenched his neck, and for a moment he thought he was badly hurt.

He bounced to his feet with another shaft in his hand and had to pause to break off the arrows in his breastplate, which stuck out like pins in a lady’s pincushion.

The capitano roared, ‘Ramming speed! Everything, now, by the grace of God!’

The timoneer’s staff began to thump the deck in a frenzy.

Only two of the Turkish ships were ranging alongside. The third had lost her stroke — a real danger at high speeds, with arrows coming aboard, oarsmen dying or wounded, and the sounds of many sets of drums.

Peter had an arrow in his thigh and another in his hat, and yet he rose from the cover of the high bulkhead and loosed down into the knot of archers in the nearest ship’s waist.

Swan rose and loosed — not at the enemy archers, but at the helmsman and the timoneer on the nearest deck..

‘Good boy,’ Peter said. It sounded like Gut buoy.

Peter rose and loosed.

Swan rose …

The Turkish vessels were suddenly almost a ship’s length behind. He loosed, almost at random.

Peter rose, paused, and allowed himself to slump to the deck. He let the tension off his bow and dropped the arrow to the deck. ‘Oarsmen tiring,’ he panted. ‘Theirs, not ours!’

‘We have them, my beauties!’ shouted Ser Marco. ‘Everything you have, for by the Virgin, we have them.’

The Turks fell behind at an astonishing rate. In ten minutes, the captain ordered all rowing halted and had the sail up — in the time it would take for a good priest to say a mass, they were virtually alone racing down the Dardanelles.

They laughed, and some men cried, and Swan looked down and began to push the spent arrows out of the ruin of his once beautiful breastplate. Such was the spirit of battle and the joy of survival that he had four of them out of his cuirass before he realised that the sixth wasn’t in his fauld. It was below his fauld.

He’d never felt the arrow. But when he saw it, he saw the blood, and suddenly the pain of it hit him.

He sat abruptly.

Peter gave him a long look, and shook his head. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said. ‘That’s a bad one.’

Swan opened his eyes. He was on a bed — a very comfortable bed — and the sun poured in on him from a pair of arched windows at the end of the bay. The walls were white, and the sheets were white linen.

In a single breath, it all came back to him — the ship fight, the water gate, the cisterns and sewers, Khatun Bengul. Omar Reis.

He looked down, and moved his leg, and it was still there.

A middle-aged man with ginger hair shot with grey, a short, pointed beard and a black skullcap came down the line of beds. He had a set of wax tablets in his hand and wore long brown robes. He paused at the only other occupied bed, leaned far over, so that his black-capped head vanished from view — and Swan heard a murmur.

When he rose from the bedside, Swan saw the eight-pointed star on his breast. He looked at Swan, met his eye and smiled.

‘Master Claudio!’ he called softly. ‘Your patient is awake.’

He’s a knight of St John. A Hospitaller. Where the hell am I?

Master Claudio emerged from the arched door at the far end of the bay with a tall clay bottle and a cup on a tray. His gown had wide sleeves, and as he moved they seemed to flap, enhancing the impression he gave of a small and angry bird of prey.

‘Look at you!’ Claudio said. His acerbic tone could not mask his obvious joy. ‘I think you are going to live, and by the Virgin, messire, I intend to exhibit you in every classroom in Padua. I will be the most famous doctor in Europe!’

‘Really?’ Swan felt good — tired, but good. He didn’t feel as if death had brushed him.

‘You took an arrow in the groin. Don’t worry — your penis is intact, as are your testicles. The arrow was three fingers higher. You ought to be dead. But by St Martin — I got it out without touching the artery, and you must have Lucifer’s very own luck, because you should have died screaming of infection five days ago. Or died silently in a massive fever, burning as if the sun god himself wanted to take you.’

The Knight Hospitaller came over. Swan couldn’t help but notice that the man was wearing full-length boots under his long scholar’s gown. He had blood under his nails.

‘He really is going to live,’ the knight said in northern Italian. ‘You owe some thanks to God, young man. If this is not a miracle, it comes very close to one.’ The knight inclined his head. ‘Turkish arrows are often poisoned, as well.’ He pointed at the wound in the younger man’s groin.

Swan looked down at his wound and got the choking feeling he associated with injury — his breathing grew instantly shallower, and his vision began to tunnel. He could taste salt.

The Hospitaller held a basin for him. ‘It’s healing, mon brave,’ he said, his voice kind.

Swan’s hands were shaking. He looked away, and then the gravity of his wound really hit him. ‘Fuck,’ he said quietly. ‘Apologies, Sir Knight.’

‘You may call me brother. I am Fra Domenico Angelo.’ He bowed. ‘I gather you are the young man who has saved the head of St George.’ He put his hand on Swan’s head. Swan felt the ring on his scalp. ‘The blessings of our Lord and Saviour be upon you and remain with you. Amen.’

He walked back along the ward, spurs ringing faintly against the floorboards, while Swan contemplated the magnificent diamond he’d just glimpsed on the knight’s hand.

A jewel like that cried out to be taken.

‘Where are we, Master Claudio?’ Swan asked.

‘Monemvasia, in the Morea,’ Claudio said. ‘We had twenty men wounded, and we needed a hospital or all of you were going to die.’ He pointed down the ward at the other beds. ‘The other men are Genoese. They had a little Turkish problem, too.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Our galleys are lying together in the port, and we are not good bedfellows, eh?’

Swan tried to sit up, and discovered his wound was still capable of inflicting horrifying levels of pain. ‘Sweet Jesu!’ he moaned.

Claudio nodded and poured a clay cup full of medicine. ‘Just so. Drink this.’ He smiled, looking more than ever like an angry sparrowhawk.

‘Not bad,’ Swan said as he finished his tot.

‘Opium,’ Claudio said. ‘Everyone likes it.’

Swan was two weeks in Monemvasia, and during those two weeks, the Sultan’s armies swept through Greece, taking three of the great Frankish castles.

Swan heard it all from the serving brothers. The Hospitaller brothers were, most of them, former mercenaries who had learned the rudiments of nursing in the service of the order. The eldest, Sam Totten, was English.

‘We’ll have this ward full of men in no time, mark my word,’ he said. ‘Fucking Greeks. Useless sods if you ask me. More interested in fighting among themselves than fighting the Turks.’

‘Unlike the well-unified Italians, you mean,’ Swan said. He was playing piquet with the older man. He looked at his cards again, shook his head in weary resignation, and said, ‘I have a few friends who are stradiotes. I think they’d tell you that the empire was worse than the Turks. And they might debate the point about being bad soldiers.’

‘Oh, by St George, young master, their soldiers is good enough — hard as nails. It’s their fucking-pardon-my-expression noblemen and churchmen. They fought among themselves until the Turks ate them. And now they’ll take this place and Mistra and then — pfft. All gone. By your leave. Sixty-eight points.’ He showed his cards.

Swan shook his head. ‘Thirty-one points, so I’m doubled. I hate this game.’

The older man stood up. ‘This place could hold a long time, but it will need an ally. Venice — the Pope, mayhap.’

Swan sat up carefully, using his elbows and not his stomach muscles. ‘I thought this place belonged to Venice.’

The monk shook his head and sat back on his stool. ‘The Despot took it from the Prince of Achaia — oh, years ago. Before ever I came out to Hellas. Agincourt year, or even before. Now, if the local men are lucky, Venice will take it back.’ He looked up. ‘See what I mean? The Despot spent his treasure taking this place, instead of fighting the Turks.’

They heard booted footsteps and spurs, and the older serving brother leaped to his feet and cleared the tray with the cards. He dumped it into a sack and put the sack smoothly under Swan’s mattress. He seemed very practised at this movement.

‘Lucky for all of us that Fra Diablo wears spurs, even in the hospital,’ the monk added. ‘Like a bell on a cat.’

‘Fra Diablo?’ asked Swan.

The older Englishman winked. ‘Can I get you aught else, Master Swan?’

‘A really beautiful girl who will do all the work?’ Swan asked wistfully.

Totten didn’t even laugh. He wrinkled his brow and walked off as the knight strode on to the ward with Di Brachio in tow.

‘Our prize patient,’ said the knight. ‘Touched by God. Messire Swan, this gentleman has come to see you. I hope he is an agreeable visitor, as I have a small item of business to discuss with the two of you.’

Swan saw the ring, collet turned in to hide the stone. Even as he glanced at it, he noticed the knight twirl it with his thumb, and the stone shone for a moment and then vanished again.

That thing is very, very big.

Di Brachio took Swan’s hand and pressed it. ‘I want you to know that when I was told you were going to die, I was, perhaps, going to shed a tear.’ He leaned over and kissed Swan on both cheeks. ‘But as you plan to live, I suppose you’ll eventually replace my boots.’

Swan laughed, and his gut hurt.

‘How is everyone?’ he asked.

‘Di Brescia got through without a touch. Giannis got an ugly wound — an arrow that ran right up his left arm under the skin. Looks terrible, but seems not to trouble him much. Only one man died — Giovanni, the archer.’ He grinned. ‘The pretty actress asks for you every day. Don’t get your hopes up — I think she’s changed horses for Giannis.’ He shrugged. ‘Peter is in another ward — he took three hits and he’s slower to recover than you.’

‘Sweet Christ,’ Swan said.

Di Brachio nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a shot stour like it.’ He shook his head. ‘Arrows fell like snow.’ He sighed. ‘And you, scapegrace? Are you planning to live to make more trouble for me?’

Swan met his eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Di Brachio shook his head. ‘Don’t be. This one isn’t on your head, my friend. Or rather, it is on the head, not on you. The head of St George. The news that we have it is everywhere — the oarsmen blabbed. Right now, the head is in the Hospitaller chapel, and even the Greeks are coming to venerate it — there’s a line outside. The Sultan has ordered us taken. There’s an army coming under Omar Reis to lay siege to this place.’

Fra Domenico waited patiently, his hands folded inside his robe.

Di Brachio got off the bed and smoothed the counterpane with his hand. ‘My apologies, Sir Knight. You wanted to speak to us?’

‘I expect the army was coming here anyway,’ the knight said. ‘The Sultan didn’t plan to let this town stand. He intends to take all the Morea. And then the Balkans. And then Italy.’

‘Italy?’ the two men said together.

‘He intends to conquer the world, like his hero, Alexander,’ Fra Domenico said. ‘It is along these lines I wished to speak to you two worthy gentlemen in private. I do not command this town. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that I am allowed to maintain a Latin chapel and a hospital within the walls.’

Di Brachio smiled mirthlessly. ‘Messire is too modest.’

Fra Domenico raised his eyebrows.

Di Brachio shrugged. ‘Are you not the captain known as Fra Diablo? The most notorious pirate in the Aegean? Hero of Genoa, the curse of Venice?’

Fra Domenico sighed. He tugged his beard, and for a moment he was a frightening figure — Swan saw him unhooded, so to speak, and then he veiled his eyes and shook his head. ‘I do not answer to that name, and I attack only enemies of the faith. Venice makes up names for me because I am not their friend when they ally themselves with enemies of the faith.’ He all but spat. ‘And you, of course, are of the Bembii, are you not?’

Di Brachio spread his arms. ‘Alas, I am, although depending on how the wind blows across St Mark’s Square, my father may have disowned me.’

The knight sat on the next bed and sighed. ‘Venice and Genoa — our infighting was the death of Constantinople.’

‘That’s a merry tune for you to play,’ Di Brachio said, curling his lip. ‘I hear that Genoa-’

‘I don’t serve Genoa,’ the knight said. ‘I serve God. That said — what I hear — from my friends,’ said the knight, ‘is that both of you serve Cardinal Bessarion.’

Swan looked at Di Brachio, who let his lashes drop over his eyes.

‘The Greek mimes say it openly,’ the knight added quietly. ‘I’m afraid they are so delighted to be out of the city that they talk too much.’

Di Brachio’s expression grew pained. ‘It is possible I have some passing acquaintance with His Eminence,’ he admitted.

‘This city needs a patron,’ the knight said. ‘We cannot hold it. I have three knights and twenty brother sergeants and as many mercenaries — and we are all supposed to work the hospital. The new rumour that I hear is that the two Paleolog brothers have had a disagreement — about resistance to the Grand Turk. The local gentlemen and their stradiotes might number sixty good fighting men. We need a professional garrison. We need twenty thousand ducats’ worth of repairs to the walls and we need these things immediately.’ He paused. ‘If I get you a letter from the leaders of this city, can you see to it that it goes to the right recipients in Rome?’

Di Brachio’s face registered something between a frown and a sneer. ‘A knight of the powerful order of St John can certainly get a letter to Rome.’ He looked at the ring on the knight’s finger. ‘A man who wears a ring like that can find twenty thousand ducats.’

The knight wrinkled his lips. ‘We need help now. If you can get that help from the Signori, even better.’ The knight leaned forward.

Di Brachio leaned forward too. ‘Perhaps if you had not been quite so busy using this port as a haven to prey on Venetian shipping …’ He shrugged. ‘Listen, messire — are you proposing to sell this town from under the Despot?’

The two men stared at each other. Neither budged — they were nose to nose.

Swan cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps I could broach the matter with the cardinal,’ he said.

Both men turned to look at him.

Swan smiled. ‘My wound hurts. Perhaps I might rest?’

Di Brachio’s look promised him the torments of hell, but Swan rarely cared about long-term consequence. He lay down and rolled over, facing the wall.

Di Brachio leaned over him and whispered ‘You bastard’ in his ear.

Darkness fell, and Swan was awake, plotting. He had the outline of a plan, and wondered to himself what a city — a city with its own international wine trade, perhaps a little past its prime — was worth. In ducats.

There was movement at the end of the ward.

Swan grew very still.

Something pale and graceful was coming down the ward — moving with a sort of effortless inhumanity, like-

The hackles stood up on Swan’s neck for a moment, and then he smelled attar of roses and a little healthy human sweat. He took his hand off the ear-dagger under his bolster, and lay back.

‘I gather I have to do all the work,’ she said. She sounded young, and pretty — and the truth was, he wasn’t ever going to know. It was very dark, and all he saw was the gleam of her naked back in a ray of moonlight as she pulled the shift over her head.

She didn’t linger, and she expected to be paid, and nonetheless, he felt much better. Perhaps because everything worked. Perhaps-

He made her laugh, and he kissed her before she took his silver and left.

On balance, he decided she was beautiful.

They sailed for Venice two days later, leaving a half-score of men in the beds of the infirmary, but not Swan. Ser Marco ordered them to sea as soon as he caught the rumour of a powerful Turkish squadron up the coast towards Hermione. Fra Domenico seconded his efforts to get to sea.

A deputation of the towns merchants and nobles visited Ser Marco with a set of scrolls for the Pope and for the Doge of Venice.

Swan had his own scroll, from the town’s ruler. It was brought to him by a Greek priest whom he had seen on the wards as he recovered. The man gave him the letter with a bag of Venetian ducats.

‘You are English?’ he asked.

Swan smiled. ‘Yes, Pater,’ he answered, in Greek.

‘My grandmother remembered when there were Englishmen here. And an English church. But that was long ago.’ He nodded. ‘Men say you search for old scrolls and books, Englishman.’

Swan nodded and sat up a little more. ‘It’s true,’ he said.

‘There’s not much here,’ said the priest. ‘Too many Italians have rifled our libraries. But — have you visited any of the islands? Lesvos? Chios? They might have good libraries.’ He fingered his beads. ‘I went to school on Lesvos. I could write a letter to my abbot. If you will give me your promise to try and make your Latin Pope accept this town. And arm it.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I would anyway,’ he said, with uncharacteristic candour.

Fra Domenica brought him wine. ‘I gather Father Giorgios was here,’ he said. ‘Some say he is a spy for the Paleologi. Others say other things.’

Swan was unable to take his eyes off the knight’s ring ‘Is that … Roman?’ he asked.

Fra Domenico smiled. ‘Greek. They say. I had it off Khaireddin, the corsair. He claimed it belonged to Alexander the Great.’ The knight held it out — then changed his mind and took it off his finger. Swan held it in his palm. ‘Quartz?’ he asked.

‘Diamond,’ said the knight.

‘By the virgin, messire, this ring is worth-’

The knight shrugged. ‘A few thousand ducats, perhaps. I will turn it into money when I must.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’m told that the cardinal loves such baubles.’

Swan looked away. ‘He loves the ancient world,’ he said. ‘I think he’d be more taken with a lost book about Alexander than the conqueror’s ring.’ He tried to hide his acquisitiveness and said, ‘But he loves a fine present …’

The knight nodded. ‘It has hermetical powers,’ he said. ‘Listen, young man. I’m a man of the sea and a man of God, and I’m not a man of this town. Eh?’

‘It’s not worth the ring, to you,’ Swan said.

The knight laughed. ‘I feel as if I’m talking to a theologian.’ He shrugged. ‘But no. It is a sin, no doubt, but I love the ring.’

Swan weighed it in his hand, considering how he might steal it. Then he handed it back. ‘A magnificent thing,’ he said. ‘Thanks for letting me feel it.’

‘You saved the head of St George from the infidel!’ Fra Domenico said. ‘I would do a few favours for you.’

Swan went down to the lower ward and divided the ducats with Peter, who was showing every sign of recovering despite arrow wounds that still leaked.

Peter counted the coins and nodded. ‘I’d like to say if had vorse voundz,’ he said. ‘But I haf not. Almost a hundred ducats, master. Two days’ pay.’ He smiled.

The fiction that he made fifty ducats a day had once infuriated Swan, but now he took it in his stride. ‘I’m only three hundred days in arrears, now,’ he said.

‘Pah, you haf come round to my way of tinkink at last.’ Peter grinned. ‘I am not likink that you leaf me here.’

Swan smiled. ‘I’m fairly sure I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Equally sure this town can use a master archer.’

Peter’s grin vanished. ‘You vill safe my wages by leafing me to die in the siege?’

Swan nodded. ‘That’s my plan, yes.’

‘Best come back and get me, or I vill haunt you, yess?’ Peter’s wound made his accent harsher. He had lost weight and his cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut butter. His long mouth was pale — almost grey.

Swan embraced him and got his kit aboard the galley in time to watch the oarsmen come aboard. They were beyond dissipated — most of them had spent their advance on pay, and a few had sold their arms. One remarkable man seemed to have no clothes at all except his rain shirt of tar-daubed linen, which he wore with the regal dignity of a man who was very, very drunk.

Once again, Swan had to remark on the many similarities between Englishmen and Venetians.

Di Brachio came and leant on the rail of the command deck next to him. ‘So, Messire Swan — where is the head of St George?’

Swan all but jumped out of his skin.

Di Brachio laughed aloud. ‘I have it. Or rather, Master Nikephorus has it, although there was almost an incident — the town’s fathers did not want to let it go, and we had to convince them that if it stayed here, we would not look favourably on their letter to Venice and the Pope.’ Di Brachio turned, set his back against the rail, and stretched like a long-limbed cat. ‘So how much did they bribe you to carry the letter?’

‘Three hundred ducats,’ Swan said.

Di Brachio whistled between his teeth. ‘Why you? Why not me?’

Swan grunted as he moved his weight off the rail — his stomach muscles were weak — and reached into the leather sack which the knights had given him to carry his laundered clothes. ‘Here’s yours,’ he said. ‘I split with Peter.’

Di Brachio weighed the small purse in his hand. Then he dropped it into the front of his doublet. ‘You really are an honourable thief, Master Swan.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m not well enough connected to do them their favour without you. But won’t Venice take this place back like a shot?’

Ser Marco came up the ladder to the command deck like a much younger man. The oarsmen were still coming aboard in a noisy mob — offering not a hint of the disciplined machine they could become. But Ser Marco had clearly heard part of the exchange.

‘It depends,’ he said. He and Di Brachio exchanged a glance. ‘They should, but it may not be in any faction’s interest to take this city and garrison it. Since the fashion for malmsey wine changed, and the sugar trade moved, this city isn’t as important as it once was. A year-round garrison and twenty thousand in wall repair? Venice is a business, Messire Swan, not an empire.’ He shrugged.

Di Brachio nodded. ‘And — if I may, Ser Marco — it depends on the relations between the Serenissima and the Despots. There are two Greek rulers here, Master Swan — Demetrios, who favours alliance with the Turks, and Thomas, who seems to be willing to fight. They mirror two factions in Venice, eh?’

‘And in Genoa, I’ll wager,’ said Swan. ‘No wonder the Turks push us around.’

They sailed up the Adriatic without incident, pausing to take water or eat a meal in Ragusa and the other Venetian possessions on the Dalmatian coast. They crossed the sea to drop the bishop and his retinue, including the now much esteemed Master Claudio and Swan’s friend, the notary turned man-at-arms, Cesare de Brescia, at Ancona on the east coast of Italy proper. But two weeks later, they raised the lagoon, and the sailors and unengaged oarsmen danced on the catwalk above the rowers’ deck and all the men gave three sharp cheers.

Ser Marco leaned on the rails, whistling through the gap in his front teeth. ‘I will miss them,’ he said. ‘This is one of the best crews I have ever had — three fights, and they are made. The lubbers who joined us are right sailormen, and the good men are better yet.’ He grinned. ‘If I had ever been tempted to turn pirate, it would be now — with a ship as good as this one, and this crew, I could make a fortune.’

Di Brachio bowed. ‘Messire, you have a fortune.’

‘And this is no doubt why I return my ship to the arsenal and my beautiful crew to the stews and brothels. But it is a waste, and the next capitano will not be able to get just the same crew in just the same ship.’ He shrugged. ‘Listen — Di Brachio — you are a good man. Why not give up your little ways and settle down? You could command a galley. I have written you a very strong commendation to the Ten.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Why don’t you just call yourself Bembo? Your father accepts you — in public. He has no other son.’

Di Brachio shrugged. ‘The Ten do not love me,’ he said. ‘My father, bless his soul of iron, is still undecided.’

Ser Marco spat. ‘When it comes to killing men in Outremer, you’ll find that the Ten care very much less about your personal habits,’ he said. ‘Marry a girl and make some heirs, and you can do as you please. Surely your father has said all this to you.’

Di Brachio shrugged again. ‘I am not yet ready for this surrender,’ he said. ‘I am like a citadel that, having survived a nasty siege, is not anxious to join the new peace. And what of the poor girl?’

Ser Marco looked offended. ‘What of her? Girls are girls. They know the game.’

Di Brachio shook his head. ‘Messire, you are the finest commander under whom I have shipped, but on this, we do not agree.’

Ser Marco embraced him. ‘Well, you are a fine soldier, and I’m sure we don’t like other things, too.’

Later, after the ship had docked right against the quay in St Mark’s Square and Ser Marco had returned his banner to the church and ordered the rowers to begin the last leg of the journey round to the arsenal, he also embraced Swan.

‘Try and keep Master Di Brachio alive,’ he said. ‘He might grow to be a great man — and a great Venetian.’ The knight shrugged. ‘If he survives long enough. You are a good man, Master Swan. I believe I owe you my life, and I remain at your service.’

Di Brachio went ashore to see his father, and Swan stood alone on the dock, his spirits oppressed. Many of the arsenali had pressed him to come and drink, but he knew that as a ‘gentleman’ he would only slow them. The archers were men he liked — he’d played dice and piquet with them, and the Spaniard, now much recovered, was a well-lettered man whose friendship he was happy to have.

But the archers had left the ship in St Mark’s Square, and were probably already drunk. The other men-at-arms were Venetian gentlemen, and their families had met them at the arsenal.

He saw the unloading of the wicker baskets carrying his armour, and the second basket with all the scrolls that he and Peter had rescued. Then he arranged a boat for all the mimes, and, aided by Giannis, still recovering, and Irene, he got them and their various treasures aboard and rowed across to the western part of the city.

The old whore was still on duty at the end of the warehouses. He waved, and she grinned, and he felt a fool, but the familiar sights were cheering and he had an odd feeling of isolation, as if he was wrapped in a carpet. Giannis and Irene kissed and cosseted each other at every turn, and Nikephorus was sunk in a study, and Swan missed Di Brachio and missed Peter.

The boat landed them near his old inn. He paid the boatman to stay.

‘Giannis — wait here,’ he told the soldier, and the other man nodded. His whole attention was on the girl.

Swan ran up the ladder, found that his sea legs were still strong on him, and rolled down the street for some paces before he recovered the ability to walk. But he got to the inn without being robbed, and established that they could lodge six foreigners and their belongings.

‘Where’s Joan?’ Swan asked the innkeeper.

‘Bah! She ran off with a sailor,’ the innkeeper said. ‘I have another slut if you feel the itch.’

Swan made a face and returned to the boat, and got his party of Greeks ashore and to the inn. He shared a room with Nikephorus, and he went to bed early after two cups of horrible wine. He lay listening to Irene giggle and groan and make sweet little shrieks, and tried to decide why he might be jealous. He wasn’t jealous of the woman, or the man. Merely their satisfaction in each other.

In the morning, he left the Greeks to their own devices — Greeks in Venice had many friends — and had himself rowed to the Jewish quarter after an injunction that the head must be guarded at all times. He arranged to see Rabbi Aaron.

None of the men at the gates were his friends. He felt as if he’d died and gone to a place like Venice, but populated with shadows of the men he’d seen before, and he all but growled at the young Jews, and they bridled.

Rabbi Aaron greeted him soberly, and Swan handed over a thick packet of letters from Constantinople.

Aaron bowed stiffly. ‘My thanks, and that of my house,’ he said.

Swan’s sense of dislocation was increased by Aaron’s distance. ‘Rabbi?’ he enquired.

‘I have another student to whom I must attend,’ Aaron said, and bowed again.

Swan knew he was dismissed, and withdrew, feeling as hurt as if he’d received a sword thrust.

The next week in Venice was one of the longest of Swan’s life. The strangest premonitions ruled him, and he found himself looking at the head six times a day — at one point, on his way across the lagoon to see Di Brachio, he was so pierced with worry about the head that he ordered his gondolier to turn the boat and row him back to the steps nearest his inn. Notes to Di Brachio brought no response, and the Greeks were constantly busy with their own friends — Venice was full of Greek exiles.

But on Friday Di Brachio sent him a note; that night he dined with Di Brachio’s father, who was effusive in his praise, and the next morning they prepared a convoy of horses and a cart to take the Greeks and all of their belongings to Rome. The next two days passed in a pleasant whirl of near-military preparations, and on Monday, they rode for Rome, with two carts, all of the Greeks, two French merchants and a priest and six soldiers provided by Messire Bembo. Despite the season, they made good time, and passed the length of the Romagnol with no more trouble than they travelled the Veneto — although the tolls were higher and the local soldiers looked like criminals dressed in armour. They climbed into the hills, drank thin red wine that never seemed to warm them, and endured three straight nights in hostels built to accommodate pilgrims, where they endured fleas of a number and viciousness unlike anything they had encountered. The Greeks went and stayed in the stable, and Andromache reproved Swan.

‘You rescued us from the Turks so that we could be eaten by your ferocious heretic insects! Are you sure this isn’t hell? It’s cold, and the bugs …’ She shook her head.

The third night, Di Brachio returned from a long ride ahead to report that all four inns were full to the rafters.

Swan shrugged. ‘In England, sometimes a gentleman will rent a barn,’ he said.

Di Brachio nodded. He was biting the leather of his riding glove, trying to get it off. ‘Yes, it is much the same with us,’ he said. He pointed his chin at the distant towers of a small castle. ‘Go ask them. Be English and noble — everyone here likes that.’

Swan’s cloak and gloves were soaked through with icy rain, and he could see that Master Nikephorus’s lips were blue, so he cantered his rented horse across the fields to the castle, which, close up, proved to be very small. But they had a small stone barn, and the very cautious owner, who conducted his entire negotiation from behind a cocked crossbow, agreed to rent them the barn for five ducats — an outrageous price. But some hours later, when they sat in the firelit dark with good food — brought by the cautious lord’s servants — and good wine, the ducats seemed well spent.

Di Brachio was in no hurry to make his blankets, and he and Swan sat up, listening to the others snore.

Swan told his mentor the tale of the rabbi’s stiffness, and Di Brachio shrugged elaborately, palms up. ‘Listen — you stole the head of Saint George and twisted the Sultan’s tail,’ he said. ‘You think this will have no consequence? Are you an idiot? Jews were probably arrested — mayhap Solomon himself was arrested.’

Swan froze.

‘Your friend Omar Reis will not lightly accept a defeat, Messire Swan. Men will die. Others will be tortured. The price of your little escapade …’ He shrugged. ‘Bessarion may be none too pleased with us.’

Swan shook his head. ‘Why — damn it! I did everything he asked!’

Di Brachio lay back in the straw. ‘Yes — well. Goodnight, English. And don’t forget the Orsini, tomorrow. They have long memories — eh? And long knives.’

Swan was embarrassed to admit he’d forgotten all about them.

There were no red and yellow Orsini liveries in evidence as they entered Rome, and they crossed the city — a city that seemed empty after the crowds of Venice. They rode across the forum and Swan watched footpads fade into the ruins like beetles at the first sign of the cook entering the kitchen. He fondled his sword and kept his eyes moving.

But if other places seemed odd, Bessarion’s shabby palace was like home. The servants welcomed them, and the great man himself came down to the tiny yard to watch the unloading of the carts — to embrace each one of the Greek mimes, and to chatter with them in Greek. When he came to Di Brachio, he buried the Venetian in an enormous embrace, a bear hug.

‘You lived, young pup,’ he said with enormous affection, and Di Brachio returned the embrace.

Swan stood with an armload of scrolls. Bessarion met his glance over Di Brachio’s shoulder and winked, and Swan felt something give way in his chest. He’d been holding his breath. Rabbi Aaron’s dismissal had hurt.

He guided the cardinal through the scrolls he’d rescued, and he gave credit in double handfuls to the others — to Giannis, to Peter, to the archers on the ship. Di Brachio shrugged and disclaimed all responsibility.

‘The English did it all,’ he said. ‘None of the rest of us could even leave the quarter. He and his man did the work.’

Bessarion blessed every one of them in the yard, even though they all had to move carefully because the pair of two-wheeled carts filled the whole space. He helped carry scrolls up into his library, where he saw to their installation in his own network of pigeonholes.

‘This one for the Pope,’ he said. ‘This one — the Cicero — for my friend Aneas Piccolomini. A great man in the Church. And a great lover of Cicero.’

He flirted with Irene and Andromache, chatted amicably with Giannis, and repeatedly wrung Nikephorus’s hands, but when he’d seen his fellow Greeks situated in comfortable rooms, he finally took Swan and Di Brachio to his inner sanctum and closed the door.

‘Well,’ he said. He sat back on an old leather chair from the last century and put his booted feet up on his great work table. ‘The bishop has sung your praises and Master Swan’s to the Pope and to the College of Cardinals. But I can’t help but think that the head of Saint George might have been …’ He shrugged. ‘Better left at the bottom of the sewers, perhaps?’ He looked at Di Brachio. ‘Ten Jews have been executed — crucified. And forty Greeks. Mehmed II has forbidden the Pisans or the Florentines to maintain posts in the city, and he’s made other threats.’

Di Brachio shrugged. ‘We didn’t steal the head, Excellency. Your servants did that.’ He glanced at Swan. ‘Servants you didn’t see fit to mention to us.’

Bessarion shrugged. ‘I can’t …’ he began. Then he shrugged. ‘Gentlemen, I owe you some apology, and yet, I cannot let you — even you, Alessandro — know all my little secrets.’ He glowered at Swan. ‘And you, my lying Englishman. I gather that it is to you I owe the head’s recovery — and the chaos in Christian affairs in Constantinople!’

But his tone was more jesting than solemn or admonitory, and Swan failed to hide his grin of triumph.

‘There are interests in this town that received a sharp rap on the knuckles owing to your actions. But — you were there and I was not, and on balance, you have saved some wonderful books, and brought back some people I value strongly — the insides of Master Nikephorus’s head hold more books than my library, if I can find a scribe to write for him — and the head will buy me a great deal of influence somewhere.’

‘You won’t keep it?’ asked Swan, suddenly and unaccountably devastated.

Di Brachio nodded to his master. ‘Eminence, you really must see this thing to believe it.’

Bessarion raised an eyebrow. ‘Gentlemen, I am a Greek, and a man of God. I have every faith that the head of Saint George is a wonderful relic.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘Anything you’d care to report to me?’ he asked.

Di Brachio looked out of the small window by his shoulder at the wintry remnants of a Roman garden. ‘We touched at Monemvasia while English here was wounded,’ he said. ‘The Hospitaller officer there wants the Pope to take the town, or the even the Venetians.’ Di Brachio produced the letter.

‘We were paid three hundred ducats to carry this message,’ Swan added. ‘I had to leave my man there. I’d like … to go back. And retrieve him. If time allows.’

Bessarion leaned back and stared at his star-studded ceiling while he played with his beard. ‘Monemvasia. The property of the Despot, I think. Demetrios.’ He shook his head. ‘There are rumours that Demetrios is threatening to turn to al-Islam.’ He sat up. ‘The Turks are readying a fleet for Lesvos and Chios.’

‘A priest in Monemvasia said to me that the monasteries on Lesvos and Chios might have old books,’ Swan said.

Bessarion nodded. ‘Very likely. People on the islands are very rich, and well educated. The Genoese took Lesvos in — bah, I can’t remember. A hundred years before I was born, or more. Chios the same.’ He put his chin in his hand. ‘If Genoa puts a fleet to sea to save Chios …’

Di Brachio smiled bitterly. ‘Then Venice will help Turkey. They are like bad brothers — you know.’

Bessarion nodded. ‘We Christians are our own enemies. Orthodox against Catholic — Genoese against Venetian, French against English.’

Swan laughed. ‘With due respect, Eminence, the Turks are no lovers of the Mamluks, nor the Mamelukes of the Turks, nor the various mainland Turks of each other. I heard much about this in Constantinople.’

Bessarion nodded. ‘Perhaps this is just the Tower of Babel playing out among men,’ he agreed. ‘In the meantime, I’d like to see the islands saved. I have had it in my mind to send one or both of you to the Knights Hospitaller. But only if the Pope is willing to take action.’

‘Can the islands be held against the Turks?’ Swan asked.

Bessarion watched the rain for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Which is why you must buy every manuscript there that you can find.’ He nodded to Di Brachio. ‘You have had a hard journey and you will want to rest. But if the Pope will send a deputation to the knights — will you go?’

Di Brachio smiled. ‘I’d be delighted.’ His grin grew lopsided. ‘My father will be delighted, as well. What an odd occurrence.’ He leaned forward, rose to his feet. ‘Not until spring, I assume?’

Bessarion sighed. ‘It could come sooner,’ he said. ‘The knights sail in all weathers.’ He looked at the two young men. ‘It is said in the College of Cardinals that Mehmet II plans to destroy all the learning of the ancient world and replace it with the Koran. That he means to conquer the whole world.’

It occurred to Swan that this was not the place for him to declare his almost absolute admiration for the Turks — their manliness, their horses, their swords and their war machines and their poetry. But the picture of Mehmet II destroying manuscripts seemed a little extreme. ‘The Grand Turk reveres learning,’ he said.

Bessarion’s baleful glare fell on him squarely. Swan liked his employer, and he’d heard many foolish things about Christians while he was with Turks. He nodded. ‘But of course, he is the merest infidel,’ he added piously.

Bessarion’s basilisk stare faded into a pleasant smile. ‘Excellent. Get some rest — well-earned rest — from your Herculean labours. There is a new steward about the place — Father Ridolpho. A protege of the Cardinal of Avignon.’ His eyes crossed Di Brachio’s, and some message passed. ‘He is very’ — here the cardinal gave the slightest sniff, as if he detected an unpleasant odour — ‘very careful with money.’ He scribbled a note and handed it to Di Brachio.

‘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 that 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.

Swan was covered in Di Brachio’s blood — his hands were sticky with it. But he got his friend on to the table, half-rolled him over, and used his dagger to cut the Venetian’s doublet off his body, an act for which he suspected Di Brachio wouldn’t thank him.

It was more than a gash. The blow had penetrated the skin, not between the ribs, as Swan had imagined, but below the ribs. The skin sagged open in a way Swan found a little obscene. It wasn’t like any other wound he’d ever seen, and it began to dawn on him that Di Brachio might really be badly hurt.

Violetta was not as shocked. ‘Hot water,’ she said, clapping her hands. Then she pulled her light linen chiton over her head. She twirled it once — and handed it to one of the kitchen women before taking a sponge full of warm water from the head cook.

‘It’s boiled,’ said the cook. ‘Looks bad,’ she added with apparent indifference to the wounded man and the naked woman.

Swan watched Violetta take the hot sponge to Di Brachio and conquered his own fear. He had to climb on to the table, but he took various rags handed to him by the kitchen staff and began to probe the wound. Violetta opened it with her fingers and looked at it carefully even as it filled with blood.

‘It’s not a death wound,’ she said. She was kneeling on the table, her thighs and lower legs already red. ‘No bubbles — not into the lung and whatever else is there. Unless he bleeds out. Stupid fuck. What did he do — run out and attack an army?’

Swan managed a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said. He remembered Master Claudio’s instructions, and he pressed the edges of the wound together and pushed down as hard as he thought he should. The rags began to turn red.

It occurred to Swan that all this had happened before — that the kitchen staff at Madame Lucrescia’s was highly skilled in dealing with sword wounds. He smiled across Di Brachio’s insensate body at Violetta. ‘You are beautiful, even covered in blood.’

‘It’s my fault,’ she said, and shrugged, and her breasts moved. Swan seldom got to watch naked women in good light. It had an artistic quality …

The cook began to use a small portion of the work surface to make mulled wine. It all had the air of comedy — the kitchen staff, now cleaning the floor; the naked beauty, the man, possibly dying. Swan bit his lip, trying to keep the edges of the wound steady. ‘Has someone sent for a doctor?’ he asked.

Violetta nodded. ‘Yes. Let me take some of that. Christ, that’s a lot of blood.’

‘How is it that you are so good at blood?’ Swan asked.

‘My mother was an army girl,’ Violetta said. She shrugged. ‘She followed armies until she got the cough and died. She protected me like a wolf — kept the men off me. I did laundry and sewed wounds to pay my way, but when she died’ — Violetta smiled at Swan, and the smile was as hard as steel and as comforting — ‘I sold — what I had. Eh?’

One of the cook’s boys appeared with needles and white linen thread. ‘Demoiselle?’ he said, as if he saw a magnificent naked woman every day. It occurred to Swan that perhaps he did.

‘And I still have a soft spot for soldiers,’ she said.

Swan felt the strength of her grip along the line of the wound and he moved his left hand, which had long since begun to cramp. ‘I’m not really a soldier,’ he said.

‘You are a great deal more like a soldier than most of the soft worms who come in my bed,’ she said.

There was a commotion in the back. The sound of horses.

‘Still want a fencing lesson?’ Swan asked. ‘I’m a good deal better than I was last time.’

She turned her head then, and met his eye steadily. ‘You don’t even intend these double entendres, do you?’ she asked coolly. ‘Of course I’d like a fencing lesson. And a hundred dagger lessons. I’d like to teach every girl in this house to handle a dagger well. And then …’ Her eyes sparkled.

Swan saw Di Brachio’s eyelids flutter. Violetta was all but kneeling on his chest. ‘Can he breathe?’ he asked.

Violetta moved. Di Brachio coughed. There was more blood.

The kitchen entrance filled with people, and one was Master Claudio. The bishop — their former employer — was only four palazzos away.

‘Swan,’ Claudio said. ‘Ah — Messire Di Brachio. Christ on the cross. Demoiselle Aphrodite, do not let go. Swan — you remembered my little class on pressure. What happened? No, I don’t need to know. He was in a fight and lost?’ Claudio’s hands were moving rapidly, at odds with his speech.

‘More rags,’ he said to the cook. ‘All boiled. You understand?’

The cook nodded. ‘We keep boiled linen,’ she said.

‘Good. How deep is it? Did you see?’ Claudio asked Swan.

Violetta answered. ‘Not to the lung, master. It cut an artery — I have one end in my hand. That’s all.’

Without any more talk, Claudio cast a loop over the artery that Violetta produced, a very small twist of rawhide covered in blood, or so it appeared to Swan.

‘Amazing that something so small makes so much blood, eh?’ he said. ‘Demoiselle Aphrodite, you are a superb nurse. Much better than this big Englishman.’

‘I had lots of practice,’ the girl said.

‘Where?’ Claudio asked.

‘Milan,’ she said. ‘The army.’

‘That’s why you know to strip,’ Claudio said with satisfaction. ‘Soldiers must love it.’

She shrugged. ‘Clothes cost money,’ she said. ‘White linen is never the same after blood.’

The bell rang for matins, and she kissed his nose. ‘Shall we go and check on our patient?’ she asked.

He didn’t leap out of bed. Naked, in a closed bed with a beautiful woman in Roman winter, he was as warm as anyone in the city, but out beyond the bed curtains, the temperature was roughly the same as it was outside the palazzo. Instead, he reached out to the shelf overhead and grabbed a fur-lined robe that the house apparently provided for male guests. He got his feet into his shoes, which were disgusting with dried blood.

The two of them had washed in a basin of steaming hot water. Now it was dark red and very cold. The washing had very quickly escalated. Even now his loins stirred.

He walked along the corridor in the growing light and found her behind him, muffled in a massive over-robe of familiar-looking English wool.

He found himself holding her hand.

Violetta’s odd and beautiful eyes met his. ‘I like you,’ she said quickly, and kissed him on the corner of the mouth. Considering how widely both of their mouths had travelled, it was curious how intimate this little gesture was.

They walked into the receiving room. Di Brachio was in bed. He had Master Claudio on one side of him, and Madame Lucrescia herself on the other. He was breathing.

They tiptoed out again.

In bed, their warmth had not dissipated, and they lay together, just being warm, for long enough that hands began to wander.

Eventually, Swan rolled off her and pushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘When do the bailiffs come to throw me out? And when is the fencing lesson?’

She laughed. ‘I have days off,’ she said. ‘One a week, or six a month when my courses run.’

Swan had grown up in an inn. ‘Oh!’ he said, understanding. ‘Can you fence then?’

Violetta shrugged. ‘We’ll find out,’ she said.

Di Brachio was moved to the cardinal’s palazzo later that day. Swan had a word with the steward — a quiet word — about how he would feel if any harm came to the Venetian. Later that day, without any coordination, Giannis cornered the priest on much the same mission, as he reported, laughing, to Swan.

The Greeks desired to see Rome — Master Nikephorus from the standpoint of academic enquiry, and the others with the enthusiasm of visitors.

Two days later was one of Violetta’s days off, and he took her out with Di Brescia, Giannis, Irene and Andromache. The younger Apollinaris was in bed with a fever that didn’t promise well — Rome was notorious for such things — and Master Nikephorus was preparing to give a lecture on the head of St George and was practising his Latin and cursing all Franks.

‘You are all ignorant barbarians!’ he said to Swan, when Swan came to the suite allocated to the Greeks to collect his friends. The master was declaiming to an audience of two sleeping cats and three attractive young women.

‘The cardinal told him that his Latin pronunciation would be incomprehensible to the Italians,’ Irene said quietly.

‘I come from the city of New Rome, where the empire endured without change! Tribes of Goths and Lombards overran this worthless, ruined town while Constantinople had running water and a thousand poets and philosophers!’ The old man sputtered.

Giannis continued to watch the older scholar with something like worship, but Irene plucked at his kaftan. ‘Our Italians are going out — shopping,’ she said.

Irene and Violetta circled each other like swordsmen upon introduction. Irene threw back her head and Violetta stood taller and threw out her chest, and Swan had to fight the urge to laugh. It was cold in the cardinal’s garden and he realised that he had not thought this through well enough.

But half an hour of walking arm in arm with Irene and Andromache broke through Violetta’s reserve, and she became as animated as Swan had seen her, speaking her Milanese Italian quickly, laughing constantly, as she showed the two Greek girls the markets of Rome.

Swan’s errand was clothing, and he brought them to the used-clothing market.

Di Brescia laughed. ‘You are a Roman, now,’ he said.

Violetta was walking, cloaked, with a veil over her face, between two equally hidden Greek ladies. The clothing market was a masculine space — men changed their hose and codpieces at the tables — and there was some consternation.

The nearest girl — most tables were run by girls — turned to the veiled women. ‘You shouldn’t be here, and if you’re here on a wager, get lost. Not a place for nice girls, sweetie.’

Di Brescia bowed. ‘I will escort the demoiselles into the church,’ he said. ‘If you and Giannis wish to see to your sartorial splendours.’

All three veiled women were laughing as hard as women in veils could laugh with dignity as Di Brescia led them away across the square. Irene began to put on a show of offended modesty — she was, after all, an actress, thought Swan. Andromache and Violetta began to match her, and men in the market began to dress hurriedly, and to apologise under their breath. And curse.

The Englishman and the Greek went up an alley and found the shop — really a house with a table outside — where Swan had purchased his first suit. The old man laughed and took his hand.

‘By Saint Christopher, my boy — you are still alive! I must say I’m surprised.’

Swan opened the pilgrim’s scrip he’d carried through the whole walk and produced the suit of scarlet and the matching cloak. ‘Too small for me,’ he said ruefully.

The old man raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes — your shoulders are much bigger. And you are an inch taller. Well — I must say that you are the first customer to return this suit standing up,’ he said. ‘Look at this slash!’ he complained.

After some haggling and much poking through neatly piled clothes, Swan emerged with two good suits of brown wool; doublet, hose and gown all matching — almost clerical in their plainness, but the cloth was good and the stitching perfect.

‘A gentleman from the far north,’ the old man said, shaking his head. ‘Here one day, caught by footpads and killed. A pilgrim from Danemark.’

Swan also picked up a pair of silk hose, only slightly worn at the knees, and a not-quite-matching doublet in superb blue velvet with embroidery. It was the finest doublet he’d ever owned, and the knife-cut in the back went between the embroidered panels neatly and had been cunningly repaired. The bloodstain on the inside hadn’t reached the velvet.

‘I could have the lining unpicked and resewn if you’d rather,’ said the old man.

Giannis just rolled his eyes. He had a good leather jerkin, carefully tooled and sporting fine buttons like acorns, and he was uninterested in any colour beyond black.

The old man smiled. ‘Soldiers,’ he said. ‘Either they are popinjays, or they are not.’

The two young men dickered for what seemed an appropriate length of time and walked off, carrying their purchases. They retrieved their party from the Chapel of St Maurice. Then they walked down the perfumers’ street, and Swan gave way to impulse and purchased something exotic for Violetta, who smelled it and glowed at him. In the street of glovers he bought gloves — plain chamois, from Austria, for fighting, and another pair for her.

The three men spent money at a remarkable rate, in fact, and drew a small crowd of beggars and worse. In the street of swordsmiths, while Swan ordered Di Brachio’s war sword dismounted and a new blade added, the commotion around the Greeks became bad enough that four men in city colours came with truncheons and began beating the beggars away.

The smith’s apprentice shook his head. ‘Everyone knows the old Pope is dying,’ he said. ‘The nothings are getting ready to riot.’

Swan collected a pair of training swords — light arming swords with no edges — and emptied his purse on the counter.

They crossed the forum carefully. Because Swan was watching the beggars, he caught sight of the red and yellow of the Orsini well to the north, and Di Brescia led them south, down the ancient steps and across the palazzo.

‘Surely they are not after us,’ Giannis said.

Swan wrinkled his nose as if he’d smelled something bad — his most Italianate habit. ‘We spent too much money and made too much noise,’ he said.

South of the forum, they seemed to be alone. They approached a tavern owner — winter was off season for pilgrims — rented his courtyard and two tables, and sat comfortably, with jugs of hot wine, in the winter sun. The landlord served them hare and a spicy sausage dish.

Swan put two gold francs into the landlord’s hand. ‘I wish the courtyard to have no prying eyes. Yes?’

The innkeeper leered. ‘None at all!’ he said.

If he had a peephole, he was doomed to disappointment, unless he fancied watching three women and three men exchange the very rudiments of swordsmanship. If Swan had imagined that he would be the teacher, he quickly discovered that both Di Brescia and Giannis had as much — or more — to contribute. Giannis was soon the voice of instruction. He had experience training soldiers, and that experience was more valuable than Swan’s youthful passion or Di Brescia’s tempered training.

The whole might have been riotous, or salacious — perhaps both together — except that the three women were so very serious.

Irene was merely annoyed when a slap to her knuckles from Di Brescia’s sword drew blood. Violetta took a cut to her right calf that caused her to hobble in the cold air, and made her angry. Andromache avoided injury but was patently afraid of the weapons and yet as eager to learn.

They played in the courtyard until the light left the sky, by which time all three women could adequately hold a sword, slap an attack away, and respond — too slowly — with a counter. The men finished with some bouts, and except for one heart-stopping moment when Di Brescia’s new right leg lunge almost resulted in Swan taking a blade through his eye, the fighting was pretty and safe.

The women had all worn hose and heavy linen shirts under their kirtles and gowns. Now they made themselves respectable again, and the men gathered in a huddle and agreed that they should have dinner.

‘Can we dine with the ladies?’ Swan asked.

Di Brescia vanished and returned smiling. ‘With money, all things are possible,’ he said.

It was cold in the courtyard, and they moved into the tavern’s main room — low ceilinged, with rafters of ancient oak and hams and sausages everywhere, smelling of Eastern spices and male sweat. The ‘house’ had a pair of trulls, the lowest form of prostitutes except those who plied their trade against the churches — hard-faced young women from the country — and a pair of bruisers whose faces suggested they were from the same town. The only other people in the main room were some Florentines, a single French soldier and the fat innkeeper and his wife, both busy over-managing the handful of staff.

‘I’ve arranged dinner and some music,’ Di Brescia said.

The food was excellent, utterly belying the appearance of the place — and explaining the wealthy Florentine party’s presence. While they ate, one of the bruisers produced a lute and began to play. Di Brescia arranged things with the innkeeper, who waited on them in person, and Di Brescia introduced each dish — the cappelletti alla cortigiana, the panunto con provatura fresca, the fine sweet Barolo wine after four bottles of Tuscan sunshine. He took charge of dinner as effectively as Giannis had taken charge of the swordplay.

The bruiser played like Apollo come to earth, as the Greeks commented, and Violetta leaned against Swan. ‘It is like seeing gold appear from dung,’ she whispered.

The three women had their veils off to eat, and the French soldier was moved to cross to their table. But after an exchange with Giannis, he shrugged agreeably — perhaps convinced that the ladies had defenders — and went back to his wine.

After the table was cleared, the landlord brought them another pitcher of his heavy spiced wine, and Violetta clapped her hands together. ‘Let’s dance,’ she said.

Everyone in the tavern agreed to that. Even as Di Brescia had taken charge of the dinner, so Violetta was instantly the mistress of the dance, and she included the trulls, the innkeeper’s wife …

‘Let’s do a bassadura. Let’s do Damnes. It’s new!’ she said. And proceeded to teach them the latest dance at the court of Milan. The women — even the Greek women — knew the steps — ripresa, continenze, mezza volta and the rest of the international repertoire of dance steps. Now it was the men who were the students, and the women who taught, and it was obvious from their tone that the men had been pedantic and patronising about swordplay. Swan thought — and not for the first time — how similar dance was to swordsmanship, while Violetta bossed him unmercifully.

Despite which, in an hour, they were dancing merrily. The main figure was a woman dancing between two men, and the men took turns with the woman — Swan smiled a little bitterly as he shared Violetta with the French soldier and later with the tallest of the Florentines, but the dancing was done with goodwill.

The Florentine leaned against the wall — women were in short supply, which gave men a rest from time to time. ‘She’s a beauty, your girl,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had this good a time in a year. May I ask who you are?’

Swan bowed. ‘Thomas Swan, equerry to Cardinal Bessarion.’

The Florentine bowed. ‘Ah — we share a friend — Di Brachio of the Bembii of Venice. I am Giacomo Accucciulli.’

Even more remarkably, the Florentine spoke excellent Greek. He admitted to Giannis that he’d been born there. The Greeks greeted him like a long-lost brother. The party grew warmer.

The French soldier sat with Swan. So much wine had been drunk that Swan could scarcely see, and he was watching Violetta whirl and leap with the Florentine and with Di Brescia — the two best male dancers — without a qualm.

‘Come on, friend — you’re a soldier. You have soldier written all over you,’ the Frenchman said, his arm around Swan’s shoulder.

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m …’ He struggled to define what it was he did. He laughed. ‘Well, I certainly saw some fighting last summer,’ he admitted.

‘I knew it!’ said the Frenchman.

They sat watching Violetta as she turned, back straight, on her toes — even in a frumpy wool overdress and a heavy man’s shirt, the set of her head, the way her eyes touched Swan’s …

Behind her, the main room’s door opened, and a wave of yellow and red washed into the room.

As it was, the Orsini were immediately confronted by Violetta, and her beauty turned their heads for a count of three, before their captain pointed at Swan. ‘There he is!’ he shouted.

By the count of three, Swan was standing erect with his sword in one hand and a heavy dagger in the other, and he was surprisingly sober when he came on guard. He turned his head once — looking for somewhere to run — but the construction of the place left him no options. The kitchen door was far across the room behind the table at which the Florentines had been sitting. The party was all intermingled now -

Nor did the Orsini seem to have any target beyond Swan. The leaders — three men — ran across the open floor.

The Frenchman seized the heavy table at which they’d been sitting and stood up — tipping the table up like a fortress wall. His left hand saved the pitcher of wine as the table fell with a crash.

Swan had nowhere to retreat — the back wall was at his left shoulder.

The lead Orsini thug tangled with the table. The second man leaped over it with an acrobatic jump, but Swan put his left-hand dagger into the man’s stomach and threw him into the wall behind him with a crash. The wall moved — plaster cracked, leaving the twigs and brush that had been used to set the mortar plain to see. The third man cut with a heavy sword at the Frenchman, who parried with the pitcher of wine — it shattered, and sticky, hot wine flew. Swan stabbed diagonally across the table into the exposed underarm of the red and yellow bruiser who was trying to hack the Frenchman down.

The room was full of red and yellow.

The man who’d lost his footing at the table had recovered, and Swan met his sword, mid-blade to mid-blade, over the table. Both men tried for the other’s blade, Swan with his dagger, the other man with a gloved hand — Swan tried and failed to land a pommel-punch, and the Orsini’s left hand punched his dagger arm hard enough to threaten his grasp of his weapon. He threw it with little force, but the quillons hit his assailant’s face and made him flinch, and Swan got his left hand on his own sword-blade and slammed the edge down on the man’s left hand where it had come to rest on the table, breaking all the other man’s fingers.

The Orsini swordsman stumbled back, and Swan vaulted the table and made a fast cut to finish the fight, but the other man parried.

Swan drove him back three steps, but each step took him deeper into the melee, and any thought of single combat vanished as a fist caught him in the thigh — an almost harmless blow that nonetheless awakened him to the fact that he was surrounded by enemies, most of whom had their own opponents but all of whom could potentially end his life.

He caught a sword-blade intended for his head on his crossguard, trapped it with his left hand and slammed his whole hilt back down the line of the attack, making teeth fly. The grip on the enemy sword slackened, and he whirled, swinging the stolen sword by the blade and cutting deeply into his own left fingers. The hilt caught an unwary retainer in the back and shoulder. He rolled with the blow like a trained fighter, but not fast enough to avoid Di Brescia’s debilitating kick to the groin and follow-up blow to the head.

Swan caught a new assailant’s attack in his peripheral vision and raised his sword, only to have it smashed by a chair — a heavy oak chair — which broke his beautiful blade and almost shattered his right arm. One leg caught him a glancing blow to his lip and ripped his face.

Swan saw red, stepped into the open space created by the chair and caught the man’s dagger hand in his own bloody left — the chair-thrower tried to use his own left to drag Swan to the floor, but Swan passed under the blow as Di Brachio had taught him on board ship — slamming his elbow into the man’s throat in passing his own right arm across the Orsini’s body, turning the man unwillingly outward and away, and then throwing him over his own right leg — while maintaining control of the dagger hand, so the man’s shoulder separated with a loud pop, and he screamed like a woman in childbirth.

Giannis had another man against the wall, and was slamming his head repeatedly against the tiles of the fireplace. There was a high-pitched shout of triumph, and another man fell heavily against Swan’s legs. Violetta stood triumphantly over her victim while Irene nursed her knuckles.

‘She parried and I thrust,’ Violetta said, breathing hard.

Irene had a bad cut all the way down her hand and arm. She stared at it, and Andromache grabbed her. ‘Don’t pass out, you little fool!’ she shouted.

Swan rotated, looking for a new adversary.

The Florentines had taken the Orsini by surprise, and all three of them had downed a man, shattering the weight of their attack. Messire Accucciulli bowed like the dancer he was, and flourished his blade. ‘A perfect end to a perfect evening,’ he said.

Di Brescia was looking at the men he’d downed with all the pride of middle-aged prowess, but he returned the bow. ‘Messire may well have saved us,’ he said.

The Florentine shrugged. ‘A small return on your hospitality. Who would abandon a dance partner?’ He bowed to Violetta. ‘At your service, my lady, whoever you might be.’

Swan was looking at Irene’s hand. The blade had crossed her guard and cut down between the knuckles, almost separating the web between the fingers — and had also scored high on the forearm near the elbow.

Violetta helped Swan lower the Greek girl into a chair — the same chair that had done some damage to Swan’s face. ‘Look away,’ she said to Irene, who was white as a sheet and breathing very shallowly.

She peeled the skin back from the edges of the wound for a moment and nodded. ‘Needle and thread?’ she asked.

Giannis and the Frenchman were looting the fallen men of their purses.

The Frenchman laughed. ‘By Saint Denis, I was out of money, and I only joined you lot to touch a woman for a change, and see here! Money from heaven.’

Giannis gave him a look. The Frenchman raised both hands. ‘Share and share alike!’ he said with Gallish sincerity. ‘I swear! Brothers for ever! Or until we have to fight!’

The Florentines watched the process with distaste. ‘What becomes of them, then?’ Accuicciulli asked Di Brescia.

The Roman sneered. ‘Nothing good, but it won’t be at our hands. One dead — the rest are merely down, and this coward here’ — Di Brescia had his foot on one man’s gut — ‘is merely shamming, waiting for us to leave.’

‘Do we hold the battlefield, or must we flee from their reinforcements?’ asked the Florentine. ‘I don’t know your Roman ways.’

The innkeeper, of all people, had taken a heavy blow early in the fight, and sat by the upturned table, with his wife fussing over a new egg on his scalp. She looked up. ‘We don’t want any more trouble,’ she said. ‘My poor man — look at him!’

‘The watch won’t come,’ Di Brescia said. ‘If these were hard times, like a papal election, then both sides would send for more men and we’d have a battle. But in these decadent times …’ The older man shrugged. ‘Swan, you attract trouble like shit attracts flies, you know that, eh?’

In the end, they all went back to the cardinal’s palazzo, moving carefully. Swan’s split lip, along with the bruise to his head, had swelled outrageously, making any kind of talking difficult, and his right eye was almost swollen shut. Violetta had sewn Irene’s hand, and the Greek acrobat stood the pain during the sewing, and got honey from the innkeeper’s wife to spread on the wound. Di Brescia and Giannis were virtually untouched. They embraced the Florentine with promises of future comradery and all of them wrapped themselves in cloaks and followed Giannis, who had volunteered to scout, out into the darkness.

Swan realised that the Frenchman was with them.

‘Where are you going?’ he whispered. They were crossing the edge of the forum.

‘I need work,’ the man muttered. ‘My boss got the plague. You’re rich — hire me. I can fight.’

Swan could barely talk, much less negotiate. ‘I’ll give you a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘That is the limit of my resources.’

Bessarion had two stables, one for visitors and one for his own nags and some donkeys. Swan put the Frenchman in with the mules, and fetched him two good blankets from his own travelling gear.

Violetta stood in the shadows. ‘I can’t go to your room,’ she said.

Swan was in pain. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

Di Brescia shook his head. ‘You won’t be caught,’ he said. ‘It’s as important to the cardinal’s reputation as to ours. Come on.’ He took them in through the kitchen, and the only servant awake was a small boy nodding by the great fireplace.

They climbed the back stairs, up two flights, and crept along the barracks corridors to their rooms. Swan reached his with a sigh of relief, pulled the courtesan in behind him and shut the door. He kissed her in the darkness despite the pain.

She put a hand behind his head. ‘You taste like blood,’ she said. She sounded happy.

Later, in the darkness, she pushed him away. ‘Would you marry me?’ she asked.

Swan couldn’t see her. He grunted, thinking the proposition over.

‘The fucking priests aren’t going to marry me, are they?’ she asked the darkness. ‘My mother said that you needed to find a soldier and stay with him. She did it for ten years, until the gentleman took a lance in the side down in Naples. He was good to us. I remember riding his horse.’ She wriggled. ‘You think I’m used goods. Can I tell you something whores know that virgins don’t?’

‘My mother was a whore,’ Swan said. His whole face hurt. His side hurt. But this was … interesting.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It just doesn’t matter. Unless you let it matter. I could be a good wife. Did you just say your mother was a whore?’

‘She runs a tavern in London. Like that woman tonight, except there is no landlord. Just her brothers, who are a pair of …’ He couldn’t think of words to do justice to his uncles. ‘Bruisers. Thugs. Killers. But they were always good to me.’

They lay in silence.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’m not — exactly — the marrying type.’

She laughed. ‘Well, neither am I. But I decided I’d ask you, as you are the only man I know that I like. Well — I like Giannis, now. Di Brescia — he wanted to peel my clothes off even while he teaches me to hold a sword.’

Swan licked the inside of the big bruise on his cheek. ‘So did I,’ he said.

‘You’re not a hundred years old,’ she said. ‘Your body’s as good as mine.’

Later, he said, ‘Damn it, maybe I should marry you.’

Swan was summoned by the cardinal, and was left in no doubt of his failings. It was early, but he was already shaved, dressed and ready.

Swan looked at his empty bed, considered his past and future, and made his decision. He picked up the bag of his treasures — the small items he’d purchased on his own account in Greece — and took them with him to the cardinal.

Bessarion sat across his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘You threatened my steward, you created a riot in the forum where my name was mentioned, and you brought a notorious courtesan into my house. And no doubt fornicated with her.’ He sounded weary. ‘You look like an animal,’ he added.

Swan was past anger. He’d been awakened early by Violetta — after almost no sleep — and his face was as big as a melon. His right eye was barely able to open and he looked like a puffy-faced Turk. She had dressed quickly, with almost no talk, and she hadn’t kissed him.

He’d taken her out through the kitchen, of course. Except that the kitchen at dawn is a much busier place than the kitchen at the dark of the moon.

‘I feel that you are out of place in my household,’ Bessarion said.

Swan thought furiously — much as he’d thought when Violetta proposed marriage. It wasn’t what you said — it was how you said it. Adults had been shouting at him for his various misdemeanours for most of his life. Reacting to the injustice of the situation was almost never the best tactic. He controlled his breathing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

‘No, you are not,’ Bessarion said. He raised his eyes, and they had a little sparkle to them. ‘She is quite remarkably beautiful,’ he said. He almost sounded wistful. ‘Listen, boy. I owe you a great deal. But this is an awful time for the Curia. The loss of Constantinople …’ He shrugged. ‘For me, it is liking losing my right hand. But even for the Latin curates, it is as if God has turned his back on us.’ He looked off into space beyond Swan’s head. ‘Perhaps he has, and this is the end of the Church. Di Brachio says that the Turk plans to conquer Italy.’

Swan met his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He thinks he is Alexander born again.’

Bessarion smiled. ‘What a heretical notion for an Islamic man to hold,’ he said. ‘I wonder how I can use it against him?’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Listen, boy. There is a galley at Ancona that is readying for sea — bound for Cos and Rhodos. You need to leave this town, and I am flush with money — I can afford to send you to buy books.’ He leaned back. ‘Mind you, I suspect that you, too, are flush with money. Mm?’

‘I made some money in Constantinople, Eminence,’ Swan replied.

‘The missing stones on the head, perhaps? Never mind. I’m giving the head to the Serenissima in return for their support for a crusade. They can replace the stones.’ Bessarion leaned forward. ‘I was thinking of other money.’

‘Father Ridolpho’s gold?’ Swan asked sweetly. ‘In French francs and Genoese gold mixed? Is that what we’re looking for?’

Bessarion nodded. ‘So you admit it?’ he began loudly, and then paused. ‘French francs? That’s odd.’

‘I thought so, too,’ Swan said. He put the bag on the table — most of the bag. ‘I confess I spent some of it, but I promise it was in a good cause.’

Bessarion sorted through the coins. ‘Sweet Saviour, but the French debase their coins.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Eminence, I freely confess to you that I’d have spent more of them if anyone would take them.’

Bessarion sat back again. ‘Englishman, you are incorrigible. You confess to stealing from my steward.’

Swan smiled. ‘Eminence, he insulted Messire Di Brachio, accused the two of you of sodomy, and is obviously being paid to spy on you.’ Swan waved his hand in dismissal — a gesture he’d learned from his father, closing the subject as unimportant. ‘May I hire another soldier? I have a Frenchman below who saved my life last night.’

‘That falls in with my wishes very well, my boy, as I cannot send Giannis with you — I need him with my Greeks. And Di Brachio is better, but he will not be sailing this week or next. Hire this Frenchman by all means.’ He was unrolling a scroll as he talked — a Greek play. ‘You saved some wonderful things. Go and save more.’

‘What of Monemvasia?’ Swan asked.

‘If I am Pope …’ Bessarion made a very Greek motion with his head — neither yea nor nay. ‘I would take the city for the Holy See. But others do not feel as I do, and Genoa and Venice are putting fingers into the pie. I will make sure that your galley touches there — you’ll want your man back.’

‘But the other men are Venetians …’ Swan rubbed his chin.

‘Leave them,’ Bessarion said. ‘Unless you can make the lion lie down with the lamb.’ He waited for Swan to understand and gave up with a shake of his head. ‘At any rate …’

Understanding hit Swan — a heraldic joke. The Lion of St Mark and Venice, the lamb of the Order of St John — and Genoa. He laughed as people do when they are late to a joke.

Bessarion winced. ‘Listen, my young thief,’ he said. ‘I need you to be able to reach certain people and act in certain ways. You have good manners and your Italian is virtually flawless.’

‘Your Eminence should try my Arabic or my Turkish!’ Swan bragged.

Bessarion smiled the smile of the older man recognising something he didn’t like in himself. ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I’m sending you on a galley of the Order of Rhodos. You know them?’

Swan nodded. ‘The Knights of St John? They put on all the best plays in London. My mother says they are good to the poor.’ He smiled. ‘There were two of them at Madame Lucrescia’s a few nights ago.’

Bessarion nodded. ‘Yes — I imagine some of them are men like other men. I am arranging for you to be accepted as a Donat — a volunteer — with the order. This will allow you to serve on their galleys. Our Pope has just signed a bull stating that service on the order’s galleys will win remission of your sins.’

Swan nodded. ‘That’s … good,’ he said slowly.

Bessarion laughed out loud. He threw his head back and roared, and for a moment, with his long beard and bushy white eyebrows, he looked like the Silenus Satyr that Swan had seen in Florence. He laughed for several ticks of his enormous German clock.

‘My boy, there are few men in Christendom who need remission of their sins more than you do, and few with less interest. In a way, you are the perfect exemplar of — of …’ Bessarion shook his head.

‘Foolishness?’ Swan ventured.

‘Youth!’ Bessarion said. ‘Here’s a note for the prior — he’s the senior officer of the order in Rome. He’ll take your oath. Thomas, do me an enormous favour, and do not dishonour your oath to the order. For me.’

Swan put his hand on his heart. ‘I will be a faithful … er, Donat. Is that like being a knight?’

‘Very like,’ Bessarion said. ‘Men pay vast sums of money for the rank.’

Suddenly Swan was pleased. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I’ll do it as well as I can,’ he added earnestly. Suddenly, under his youthful show of indifference, he was afire. The Order of St John!

Bessarion handed him two scrolls. ‘These are your patents of nobility, and this is the Pope’s grant to you. The prior will want both of them. By Saint George, Thomas, I only wish I was going to be there to see you with the knights.’ He waved his hand. ‘Be off with you.’

Swan smiled winningly. ‘Eminence, you say I saved some good things. I brought other things back.’ He opened his sack and began to place objects on the cardinal’s desk.

Bessarion began looking at them impatiently, and muttered something about appointments. But the coin with Alexander’s head and ram’s horns arrested him — another with Medusa made him laugh aloud. The small seals with intricate scenes carved on them — one homoerotic and one heteroerotic — both made him laugh. The spearhead he put aside, and then held out the butt spike.

‘I suspect your military education is better than mine,’ he said.

Swan shook his head. ‘I don’t know the Greek word,’ he admitted. ‘But I think it went on the base of the spear.’

‘Beautiful — like a Greek column,’ said Bessarion, weighing it in his hand.

Swan laid out all his treasures. Bessarion nodded over all of them.

‘I will give them as gifts,’ he said. ‘The butt spike for Sforza of Mila, with the spearhead. They express the majesty of Greece. What is lost. And what can be regained. Well done.’

Swan hesitated. ‘I spent money on them,’ he said. ‘I intended … to sell them.’

Bessarion was looking at a small crystal seal with a tiny Eros masterfully carved into the face. ‘Of course you did, my young criminal. Unless you stole them.’

Swan raised his eyes to heaven. ‘I didn’t steal any of them,’ he said.

‘Then they didn’t cost you much,’ Bessarion answered him. ‘But do not think me ungrateful. I’ll get you some gold. Bring me more of this …’ He waved at his table. ‘Great men will put them in their cabinets and display them. We will have some measure of power by having these things.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘In Constantinople, we had so much of this that these would have been like rubbish.’

‘I need a new sword,’ Swan said. ‘And a breastplate that fits me better.’

‘You should spend less on Demoiselle Violetta, then,’ Bessarion said. ‘Go and see Di Brachio. I’ll find you some money.’ He got up. ‘I will look at Father Ridolpho’s activities. But stealing from another member of this household will not happen again. No matter how much you dislike him. And you will only enjoy sinning with your friend outside my house. Those are my rules. Are they clear in your mind?’

Swan bowed his head. ‘Yes, Eminence.’

Bessarion opened his five-page wax tablet set and tapped his stylus against his forehead in mock consternation. ‘Now it is I who play the fool — I have not told you your mission.’

Swan was on his feet. ‘There’s more, besides fighting with the knights?’

‘My son, much as Christendom needs every warrior, I would not, in fact, send you to fight for the order if there was another ship that was sailing east in winter.’ Bessarion sat back down, and his chair creaked. ‘Listen,’ he said very quietly. ‘The reports coming in from the Siege of Constantinople and from every action of the Turk since then suggests to some that Christendom has a traitor. Many accuse Demetrios Paleologos of being this traitor — he has openly suggested that he might convert to Islam.’

‘He is the current ruler of Monemvasia,’ Swan said.

‘You have a gift for this world of intrigue. Yes. He is. I know him — indeed, I know every member of that handsome family. If he meant a general betrayal, he would not flout his coming conversion. Besides, his hatred of the Latins is well known. Neither the Genoese nor the Venetians trust him. He is not the traitor. The traitor is … effective. Someone we trust.’

Swan nodded.

‘The Genoese are sending a famous man — Francesco Drappierro — to be their ambassador in Constantinople. You understand that Genoa openly supported the Emperor in the last days of Constantinople — yes?’

‘Yes. And paid for it — they lost Pera across the straits and most of their city privileges. I saw that with my own eyes.’ Swan nodded.

‘Just so. Now Genoa is desperate. Loss of the alum mines in Phokaia would devastate the Genoese cloth trade — loss of their sugar plantations would cripple their banking, and loss of Lesvos and Chios — which belong to the Gattelussi — would end Genoa as an overseas empire, topple the balance of power in Italy, and incidentally rob Christendom of the second-most powerful military fleet in the Inner Sea.’ The cardinal steepled his fingers. ‘Some of us suspect that the collapse of Genoa would mean that France would invade. You understand?’

‘More importantly, the fleet most likely to help the Pope,’ Swan noted.

‘I am pleased that you have become so very … accurate in your views on Church politics,’ Bessarion said. ‘So Genoa is sending a very wealthy man — one who was friends with the Sultan’s father — to attempt to bring the Sultan to a more friendly state of mind. Genoa is fully aware that there is a traitor. Drappierro will be fully briefed. You will go with him and serve where you see fit — with the knights, or with Drappierro’s embassy. The Turks hate the knights — but respect them. They despise the Genoese, but use them.’ Bessarion spread his hands. ‘This is a very ticklish matter. I meant to send Di Brachio. Can you help me catch a traitor?’

Swan nodded. ‘I can try. I imagine his weak point would be in passing communications to his Turkish friends.’

Bessarion shrugged. ‘It could be someone right here in Rome,’ he said. ‘Ah — here is a list of my plantations on Lesvos — please collect the rents if you have a chance.’

Swan wished that he had a five-fold wax tablet book. ‘I’m to go with the knights, fight for them if I must, watch for a traitor, buy antiquities for sale, and, if possible, collect your rents from Lesvos. Anything else?’

Bessarion laughed. ‘I have some shirts that need washing,’ he said. He raised his hand and blessed Swan, who knelt and kissed his episcopal ring. ‘I also have some letters for you to deliver. Come and collect them this evening. Now go and see Di Brachio.’

Di Brachio was conscious, and had Master Claudio with him.

‘Ah — you will all be my testimonials when I apply for a professorship at Padua,’ the doctor said. ‘Let me look at that eye — don’t go getting killed before I’m done with you. This is a salve — try it on the abrasion. The abrasion, fool.’ Claudio put salve on Swan’s cheek with his thumb.

Di Brachio’s skin was waxy and his face was pale so that his unshaven cheek seemed to be bruised. He coughed too much. Each cough clearly pained him.

‘Fever?’ asked Swan, whispering, which was pointless, because the close room was absolutely silent.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t think the blade cut his guts. If it did?’ He shrugged. The shrug was a death sentence.

‘I can hear every word,’ Di Brachio muttered. ‘By the crucified Christ — talk to me, Englishman. I’m so bored I might die.’

Swan pushed into the room and leaned over the bed.

‘Jesus, you look like hell,’ Di Brachio said. ‘Don’t tell me that Violetta did that to you.’

‘An Orsini bastard with a chair,’ Swan said.

‘And you killed him?’ Di Brachio asked softly.

‘No,’ said Swan.

‘What? Are you getting soft?’ Di Brachio murmured. ‘Listen, the doctor tells me you are taking the mission to Chios.’

Swan paused. ‘To Rhodos and Cos,’ he said.

‘He didn’t tell you more than that?’ Di Brachio said. ‘Did you make him angry?’

‘Not particularly,’ Swan said. He was shocked by how bad his friend looked. ‘I’m going to be made a Donat of the order.’

Di Brachio raised his hand, where a red stone burned like an eye in a small gold ring. He muttered something, and Swan leaned close.

‘He’s tired. You need to let him sleep,’ the doctor said.

‘I am a Donat of the order,’ Di Brachio said. ‘I was going to go … on crusade. For my … sins.’

‘I’ll do enough for both of us,’ Swan said, trying to keep the conversation light.

‘I thought you were supposed to keep me from getting killed — eh, English?’ Di Brachio made a clawing motion with his hand. ‘Heh — stay safe, boy.’

Swan kissed the Venetian on the cheek. ‘Live!’ he said.

‘Heh — I plan to. Hell is waiting for me,’ Di Brachio said. ‘I just keep asking myself …’

‘What?’ Swan asked.

‘How I let that cocksucker get his blade under my guard,’ Di Brachio said.

Swan changed into his new velvet doublet and silk hose and walked to the Priory of Rome with a dozen of Bessarion’s swordsmen as his retinue. The Frenchman was one of them, looking a little less polished.

The prior was a young man — as young as Swan himself. He kissed the Pope’s order reverently, and read through Swan’s genealogy, nodding. ‘Your grandfather was the King of England?’ he asked. He was obviously impressed, and trying to hide it.

Swan bowed. ‘No, my lord. My great-grandfather. My grandfather was the Duke of Lancaster.’

The prior nodded. ‘You are the child of two generations of bastardy,’ he said.

Swan thought of a number of replies, and swallowed them. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

‘But the Pope’s grant only deals with one of them,’ said the prior. His eyes burned with fanaticism and suppressed jealousy. ‘Only the most holy, most pious men are fit to lead our great crusade,’ he said.

Swan wondered whether the prior was quite sane. But years of dealing with his mother’s customers had left him some resources, and he bowed, and said in his most respectful voice, ‘I believe that His Holiness has made his desires plain enough, but I would be delighted to serve your lordship by going back to His Holiness and explaining your position.’

The prior reread the Pope’s document and frowned. ‘I suppose …’ he said.

Swan took his oaths from an older knight, and the man — clad in a black gown with the eight-pointed star and wearing a black knitted cap so old that the black was fading to grey-blue — had iron-hard hands and a steady grip on Swan’s shoulder, and Swan liked him immediately. He took Swan into the chapel of the priory, made him kneel, and left him there for an hour.

Swan knelt. He assumed it was a test.

The elderly knight came back and lit candles — seven candles. For each one he prayed a string of prayers, and then he came and knelt by Swan.

‘I make all the rich bastards kneel, to make sure they have an inkling of what this is about,’ he said. ‘See the candles? My friends. All killed facing the foe.’

‘The Turks?’ Swan whispered.

The old man shook his head. ‘Jean-Baptiste died fighting. The rest — plague, leprosy, the cough, the black fever — it’s the hospital that kills us. No armour against disease.’

Swan crossed himself. ‘I see,’ he said carefully.

The old knight helped him to his feet, and he could scarcely walk. ‘You are going to a galley, I gather,’ he said.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Call me brother. Or sir. Welcome to the order, boy. Do us no disgrace.’ The old man led him to a podium desk, where he signed a document and sealed it. ‘Take this to our bursar and have it countersigned. And then go and get yourself a ring.’ He smiled. ‘Do you love God?’

Swan hesitated.

‘Good for you, boy. Tell the truth. But have a go — see if you come to love him while you wash some beggar’s feet and feed some poor women with leprosy. Or sweat in your armour on a pitching deck while the red-hot sand is flung at you by infidels. See what follows.’ He nodded. ‘You’re a bastard?’

‘I am,’ Swan admitted.

The old knight laughed. ‘Welcome to the club,’ he said.

Swan wandered into the Jewish ghetto as if directed by his feet. But here he met no ill-will, and after several attempts he found a pawn shop that specialised in religious rings. He saw magnificent episcopal rings, and small profession rings, and one massive thumb ring that might have graced a cardinal.

The shopkeeper brought them out willingly enough. ‘What are you looking for, young gentleman?’ he asked.

Swan lifted a ring that had to be three hundred years old and admired it. ‘I’m looking for a profession ring for a Donat of the Order of St John,’ he said.

The owner’s eyebrows fluttered. ‘Oh — oh,’ he said as he picked up a tray, placed it back in a wooden clothes press, and pulled out another. ‘Oh — oh,’ he said again. ‘I have one — my wife, you know — I’m sure I have one. Oh — oh.’

Swan opened a manuscript on the main counter and found that it was an illuminated Torah. He was annoyed at how little Hebrew he remembered. He turned a page, and the owner snatched it from under his hands.

He didn’t say anything. He merely looked at Swan with something very like hate.

Swan took a step back and spread his hands. ‘I meant no harm,’ he said. ‘I-’

‘Go,’ said the man. ‘I won’t sell to you.’

In the end, Swan bought his ring from a jeweller, a middle-aged man whose daughters were his apprentices. The elder girl made his ring up while he waited — engraved garnet in gilded silver. The jeweller’s was in the same street as four swordsmiths and a vast suite of armourers who shared work space and sheds, but all of the armour looked clumsy, and Swan knew that Di Brachio never bought weapons in Rome. Gaudy stuff for the pilgrim trade, covered in crosses and encrusted in jewels. He poked about, saw nothing he wanted, and returned to the jeweller in time to have hippocras served while the elder girl tried the ring on him and then tapped it gently on to an anvil stake until she liked the fit on his finger.

Back in his rooms, he packed a pair of valises and a big leather malle, or horse-sack. It was early afternoon. He checked in the stables and secured four riding horses and a pack animal and a mule.

Giannis was currying his favourite horse. ‘You are leading an army?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m off east,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the new Frenchman.’

‘Antoine?’ Giannis asked. ‘He’s not a soldier, he’s a cook. But he’s a good cook, as we all learned at breakfast.’

‘Take care of Di Brachio,’ Swan said. He found that he was embracing the Greek. He wanted to say something like ‘I’m not sure I can do this alone’. But he didn’t.

He promised to have dinner with his friends, and then he went back to his room and changed into plain workman’s clothes.

Swan crossed the city carefully. He was by himself, and wasn’t even wearing a sword. He was dressed like a labourer, applying some of the lessons he’d learned in Constantinople. He moved from street to street like a man in enemy country, and when he saw a party in red and yellow he avoided them even when he saw that they were escorting two women. He was pleased to see some puffy faces and some bandages.

Madame Lucrescia’s was closed. Swan went to the servants’ entrance and watched until he saw three workmen carrying something heavy, and then he joined them. It was a heavy marble altar top. Swan admired it while it tore at his fingers. It had the curled shape of Greek temple capitals on columns — it weighed four hundred pounds, and even with four strong men and a small wheeled cart, it took everything they had to get it in through the kitchen and into the main room.

The great room looked different, empty, and the erotic paintings and mosaics, bereft of both customers and courtesans, looked showy and tawdry, perhaps even vulgar. Flaws in art and execution showed up more readily.

They moved the thing to the back of the room while a housekeeper chided them to be quick. The smallest man, a redhead, was clearly their foreman, and he began to argue with the housekeeper about what would happen next.

‘I’d like to come here,’ said the biggest workman. He looked at the walls. ‘Think these fancy bitches are worth the money?’

The other man spat. ‘Whores. Tools of Satan to snare men.’

‘I can’t be snared by what I can’t afford,’ said the first man. ‘Anyway, who gets his pump primed behind Saint Paul’s every feast day?’

Swan nodded agreeably as the two started what sounded like an old and well-established quarrel. He walked out of the great room and went straight up the staircase. Then along the corridor, counting doors. The rooms weren’t much wider than the beds inside them, and he counted — sixteen.

He looked both ways — there was movement in the other rooms, he could hear it — then he turned her door handle and slipped in.

She was asleep.

He watched her for a moment. Smiled, leaned over, and kissed her awake.

She tasted like old wine and too much sleep, but as wonderful as ever, and her eyes opened.

‘Want to go to Ancona?’ he said.

The winter ride across the spine of Italy to the east coast was so brutal that the pleasure of having a pretty young wife was mostly drowned in sleet and buried in snow. The Frenchman cursed his ill luck and looked after the horses with remarkable skill, reminding Swan each day of how many skills he still hadn’t mastered. The Frenchman could start a fire and maintain it, and he could find straw under snow.

And he had a name — Antoine — just as Giannis had said. ‘I had another name,’ he said with his shrug. He shrugged almost every sentence. ‘Mostly, they call me Le Coq.’

‘The cock?’ Violetta asked. She was bundled like a painting of the Virgin Mary, nothing feminine about her but the slope of her smooth forehead. They were in a barn, wearing every item of clothing they owned, and the Frenchman was pressing Violetta as hard from her left as Swan did from the right. Deep in a pile of straw.

‘Ah, no, madame. That is, I think, your Italian or your innate woman’s lechery,’ Antoine said ‘In French, I am the cook.’

‘I thought you said you were a soldier?’ Swan said.

‘People respect soldiers more than cooks,’ Antoine answered.

Another night, Antoine asked — after some hesitation — ‘I mean no disrespect, monsieur and madame, but — if I understand the situation — will not the — ahem — esteemed owner of the house wherein Madame worked — will she not be very angry?’

Swan had been thinking that very thing himself.

Violetta shrugged and burrowed deeper into the musty hay. ‘We’d have to live through the night and go back to Roma for that to concern me much.’ Later, when the Frenchman was snoring, she leaned over and kissed Swan. ‘It’s fucking cold, my feet feel like the devil breathed on them, and my rump must be bruised, to say nothing of the insides of my thighs. I can’t imagine putting myself on that mule again tomorrow.’ She rubbed her nose on his. ‘Despite which, this is in every way superior to being a whore.’

Ancona was as cold as everywhere else, and the knight commanding the order’s galley of war, Blessed Saint John, was older than Pontius Pilate and far from ready for sea.

‘Cardinal Bessarion is not a sailor,’ the knight said. He wore the brown robe of the order all the time — something that the knights seldom did in Rome, where they wore their formal black robes with richly embroidered eight-pointed stars all the time. He read Bessarion’s letter and a short note from the Pope. They were sitting in a waterfront wine shop with a big central hearth and most of the town’s male population to add to the warmth. The Knight of St John had a table to himself.

He read the Pope’s note after crossing himself, kissed the seal when he was done, and nodded. ‘I see that His Holiness is not a sailor either,’ he noted.

Swan sat as demurely as he could manage.

‘Well, I’m bound for Rhodos, lad. But not until I get some sign of clear weather. Or a rumour that the Turk is at sea. Says here you are a Donat?’ he said.

Swan stiffened. ‘Yes, sir.’

The old man smiled, and the thousand folds of his face all became more pronounced. He was quite pleasant looking when he wasn’t cross. ‘Welcome aboard. I haven’t had a volunteer in — bah. Three years.’

‘I look forward to serving.’ Swan said piously.

The knight shrugged. ‘Do you care to save your immortal soul? Do you hate the Turk? Would you give your life to save another? Give your soul to see another man go to heaven? Care for the sick?’

Swan nodded. ‘Yes?’ he managed.

The old man all but choked on his wine, he laughed so hard.

‘Do you play chess?’ he asked.

Swan shook his head. ‘Not well,’ he said.

‘But you do play. Eh?’ The old man was reading again. ‘Why Monemvasia?’

‘I left a man there — in the hospital.’ Swan shrugged. ‘He’s my friend. His Eminence said he’d ask you to take me there.’

The old man pursed his lips. ‘All depends on weather, lad, but it’s good for me — I can drop some men for the town. You’ve been there?’

Swan nodded.

‘Met Fra Domenico?’ he asked.

Swan nodded again.

‘One of the order’s finest officers.’ The old man sat up straight on his stool. ‘Get yourself a place to stay and send your harness aboard and I’ll give you warning when I can sail. No one else is foolish enough to go to sea this time of year, so it’ll just be you and me in the cabin, and all the poor oarsmen under the awning. Your cardinal must need something from Genoa pretty badly.’

Genoa? Swan thought. I thought we were helping Genoa?

He rented four rooms in a gentleman’s house — rooms that had belonged to a young bachelor who had died in the taking of Constantinople. He installed his wife and arranged for two servants to wait on her.

‘You will die of boredom, and plant horns on my head before I’ve been gone a month,’ he said.

She kissed him. ‘I intend to go and work with the sisters of Saint Francis. They allow women to nurse. And even be doctors. That’s what I’ve heard.’ She kissed him again. ‘Imagine — I might be a doctor!’

In Ancona, everyone accepted that they were married, and they went to church, shopped and visited like young people of some family. Swan rather enjoyed it, although it scared him. He expected to be found a fraud every day, and it was like an extended prank. But the gentry assumed he was a gentleman, and the nobles treated him as a noble, and the merchants accepted him as one of their own. Ancona was a small town, and a very cosmopolitan one. Besides, his status as a volunteer with the order guaranteed his social rank in a way that nothing else — fine clothes, jewellery, the right accent — ever had.

Violetta was very good at playing a young lady. ‘In Milan, we practically lived at court while my mother’s protector was alive,’ she said. ‘That’s how I know all the dances.’

In fact, Swan found living ‘at home’ with two servants and a cook to be far more fun than he’d imagined. He arranged through the order to borrow books from the various convents and monasteries in the city, and he set about reading his way through Aquinas. And their first friends — the Anconan merchant who let them their wing of his house and his wife — loaned them a plain copy of Boccaccio, and Swan read the stories to Violetta every night.

He bought a new sword that, while beautiful, was nowhere near as good as the one Peter had retrieved for him from a stricken field in France. And an Anconan armourer altered a new Milanese breastplate to fit him, and he sold the same man his old breast and back.

Christmas was one of the happiest of Swan’s life. He and Violetta served a feast to their host and hostess and Fra Tommaso, the knight of the order, cooked by Antoine. Wine flowed, sweets were eaten, and they all went to mass and then came back to eat more — even the old knight. He leaned across after his sixth or seventh cup of wine and shook his head.

‘We have another in the cabin,’ he said. ‘A pompous bastard from Genoa. But we’ll get some chess in, nonetheless. Your wife is a beauty. You’re a fool to go to sea, lad. The sea is for bachelors. And monks.’

The next day they all danced in one of the palazzos even though it was as cold as the barns of Umbria. Dancing had become the household entertainment — Violetta loved to dance and some evenings they had hired musicians to play for them at home.

In the palazzo, men who’d heard that Swan was shipping for Rhodos asked him to carry letters. One man, older than the rest, stopped by Swan and waited until his circle had cleared. All the younger Anconans bowed to him. Eventually his host introduced him.

‘Cyriaco,’ he said. ‘One of our little town’s most famous men. He shares your love of Greece — eh, Cyriaco?’

Swan clasped hands with the older man, who leaned heavily on a stick. ‘I am told that you helped to save the head of St George,’ Cyriaco said.

Swan bowed.

‘How were you able to move about in Constantinople?’ Cyriaco asked. ‘Humour an old man — I know the city.’

Swan gave in all too easily to any opportunity to brag. ‘I got to know the cisterns and sewers,’ he said with a grin. ‘And I speak some Turkish.’

‘Do you really?’ the older man asked. ‘How amazing. Now go and dance with your naiad, young man. She is remarkable. Where did you find her?’ Cyriaco bowed. ‘Come and see me before you leave. I have letters for Rhodos. And Chios,’ he added, with a certain air.

Four days after Christmas, the sun rose and shone all day. A boy came in the evening and knocked at the door.

‘Ser Tommaso says we sail in the morning,’ said the boy.

A few moments later he received another small boy, who announced that Maestro Cyriaco invited him to drink a cup of wine.

Swan threw on a robe — he had become accustomed to the ease with which the uniform of the order could be used for every social occasion — kissed Violetta, and went to the door.

‘I had other notions of your last night on shore,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Wait up.’

He walked through Ancona to Cyriaco’s house. He was rich, and lived well. There was a train of servants and animals in the big, marble-paved courtyard. But the great man himself came down to greet Swan, and escorted him, hand on arm, up his broad staircase. ‘I wanted a word in private,’ he said. ‘I am an old friend of your cardinal, Bessarion. He opened many doors for me in the East.’ He paused on the marble steps. ‘You are English — do you know why Ancona is important?’ he asked.

Swan nodded. ‘It is one of the few ports on the east coast of Italy open to Genoese shipping,’ he said.

Maestro Cyriaco nodded. ‘I am about to introduce you to an old friend — Francesco Drappierro. One of the richest men in Europe. You two will be shipmates.’

‘A thousand thanks, Maestro,’ Swan said, bowing.

Cyriaco handed Swan a small book. ‘This is a list of some of my friends,’ he said. ‘I’m too old to go back — too broken hearted that Constantinople is lost. Too happy in Ancona. But you — you will continue some of my work, eh? I’ve listed what I paid them in the margins.’

Swan drew away, suddenly suspicious. ‘Maestro, this is … spying. I am merely a volunteer with the crusade-’

‘Living with a runaway whore from Madame Lucrescia’s?’ Cyriaco smiled. ‘And you stole the head of St George? You speak Turkish? My young Englishman, if you do not want to be thought of as a member of the noble confraternity of spies, you had best cover your tracks more effectively.’ He leaned down. ‘It takes one to know one. I won’t tell.’

Servants flung doors open, and the two men walked into the second-floor receiving room, hung with magnificent tapestries depicting classical scenes — Diana hunted in a diaphanous garment very like Violetta’s, and Aphrodite rose from some waves and did little to cover herself. The niches and shelves of Cyriaco’s house held a superb collection of marbles, busts and whole statues, and Swan would willingly have spent his hour there simply gawping.

‘The products of twenty years of refined looting,’ Cyriaco said. He bowed. ‘Francesco has all my best pieces.’

Swan was still reeling at the notion that Cyriaco knew that Violetta was a whore from Rome. The man seemed not to care. Swan tried to determine whether the rich Genoese knew, as well.

Drappierro took his offered hand with two fingers, and just touched it. ‘Your servant,’ he said, without turning his head or looking Swan in the eye. ‘What do you have that’s new, Cyriaco?’

The Anconan shook his head. ‘No time to play collector, my friend. Fra Tommaso wants your goods at the ship tonight, and he intends to sail-’

‘He can sail when I tell him to sail,’ Drappierro said. It was said with such a flat certainty of authority that Swan was tempted to stand straighter. ‘I have gifts for Mehmet — not the sort of shit the Pope sent him, either.’ Drappierro turned his back to Swan. ‘Now, show me what’s new.’

Cyriaco smiled an ingratiating smile, but his voice went up half an octave. ‘Fra Tommaso has men-at-arms for Monemvasia and for Kos, my friend. He will not welcome your gifts, and he’s had his yards crossed for a week. He plans to sail in the morning.’

‘More soldiers — provocations like that are bad for business.’ Drappierro pointed at Swan. ‘Will he report everything I say to the knights?’

Cyriaco’s eyebrows shot up. ‘He is a young volunteer, and a friend of friends of mine.’

‘Very well, Cyriaco. I’ve met him, I’m suitably impressed, and I have some issues to discuss with you. Send him home. I’ll find him something to make him some money when the time comes.’ Drappierro’s hand made a finger-flicking motion — a rude gesture of dismissal.

Cyriaco looked at Swan and he let out a sigh. ‘Francesco, your manners used to be a great deal better,’ he said.

The Genoese shrugged. ‘I was poorer then,’ he said. His eyes met Swan’s for the first time. ‘I’m not at my best when I travel,’ he added.

Swan bowed.

As he let himself out, he heard the Genoese say, ‘Really, Cyriaco. Another penniless waif?’

Swan got very little sleep.

At the door, in the cold, Violetta kissed him for the hundredth time. ‘You can’t take Antoine,’ she said. ‘I’m not a cook.’

He laughed. ‘You can eat gold. I left you all mine. I’ll be back in a few months.’

She kissed him again. ‘You are the best husband I’ve ever had,’ she said.

They laughed together, and she squeezed her body against his, and he considered missing his ship.

Later, he watched Ancona roll down over the horizon from the stern of the galley, while Fra Tommaso shouted at his timoneer and the new crew tangled their oars. When Ancona was gone, he walked forward, down the ladder, and entered the galley’s only cabin, which was as spartan as you would expect on a warship whose captain was sworn to poverty.

‘And who might you be?’ a man asked in Genoan Italian. The accent reminded Swan of Father Ridolpho. Rome seemed very far away.

‘I’m Thomas Swan,’ he said. He bowed as the ship rolled in the swell of the Adriatic. ‘Cyriaco introduced us last night.’

‘Did he?’ the man drawled. He looked up. ‘Ah — you. Get me some wine, will you?’

Swan put a hand on his hip, as he had learned when he was a royal page. ‘Words of courtesy would make me the more willing,’ he said. ‘I am not your servant.’

‘Are you not?’ asked Drappierro. He glanced at Swan. ‘Never mind, then.’ He read his document further and said, ‘Fetch me a servant, will you? There’s a good fellow.’

Swan went back on deck.

He wasn’t welcome forward, with the sailors, nor amidships, with the oarsmen. The cabin had just become a little too close.

He found a place to sit out of the wind where the stern cabin joined the rowing deck, pulled his heavy cloak around himself, and prepared for a long voyage.

Content

Christian Cameron
Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome