Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome (7 page)

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.’