Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Two: Venice (2 page)

Swan set his mouth, considered blank refusal, and then smiled. ‘Spoils of war,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ said the banker. ‘The owner is . . . dead?’

Swan was surprised by the direction of the conversation. ‘Yes,’ he lied.

‘Ah,’ the banker said. ‘Good. Do you wish a loan, or a sale?’

‘How much are we talking?’ Swan asked.

‘I never bargain,’ said the banker. He shrugged. ‘I never intended to be in this business and I despise haggling.’

Swan tried not to smile. In this case, he
had
heard it all before.

‘Twenty Venetian ducats for the good one, and ten each for the others,’ the banker said.

‘As a loan, you mean,’ Swan said.

‘No, that was my final price,’ said the banker.

Swan pursed his lips. ‘You know, my friends are in a hurry,’ he said. ‘But I am not in quite such a hurry as that.’ He picked them up and dropped them back in his wallet.

The banker plucked the spectacles off his nose. ‘What did you expect? A hundred ducats?’

‘More like four hundred,’ Swan said. He shrugged. ‘Good day.’

‘You’re mad!’ said the banker.

‘You mistook me for a servant, and then you mistook me for a mark.’ Swan smiled. ‘Would you like to start again?’

‘No,’ said the banker.

Now it was Swan’s turn to shrug. He walked out into the sunlight. ‘Take me where the man behind the counter knows what things are worth,’ he said loudly.

‘Don’t come into my shop again,’ said the banker, and the heavy door slammed shut.

‘He’s the best dealer in Rome,’ Cesare said.

Swan shook his head. ‘I’ve seen better dealers in a London thieves’ market,’ he said.

The third shop they visited was in the Jewish ghetto.

‘You are too picky. Are you sure these things are worth anything?’ Giovanni asked.

But the Jew was both friendlier and far more accommodating. Swan bowed deeply, was polite, and bargained only briefly. The Jew, Isaac, counted two hundred and fifty Venetian ducats into a bag. When he was done, Swan leaned over the counter. ‘Messire, I should very much like to learn Hebrew. And Arabic. I wonder if you know someone who might teach me.’

Isaac called for kahve. They were served the sweet stuff in tiny cups by a veiled woman and Swan felt as if he was living in a fantasy poem. After some sips, Isaac said, ‘You intend the priesthood?’

Swan shook his head. ‘No, my friend. I would like to travel. And to read scripture.’

Isaac nodded. ‘I will consider,’ he said. ‘I know a rabbi here who teaches foreigners. I could perhaps teach you Arabic. If not, I have a slave who might be of help.’

‘I would esteem it a favour,’ Swan said. He held out his hand.

Isaac took his hand. ‘Very few Christians clasp hands with Jews,’ he said.

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m told that Jesus’s mother, Mary, was a Jew,’ he said. He smiled to indicate that this wasn’t meant as an insult.

Isaac didn’t smile, but neither did he withdraw his hand. ‘Very few men think as you do,’ he said.

He walked out into the late afternoon sun to find three very disgruntled men waiting.

‘You had coffee with a Jew!’ Giannis spat.

Swan shrugged. He found that in Italy everyone shrugged as much as he did.

‘How much did you get?’ Cesare asked.

‘Enough. Let’s get some clothes,’ Swan said.

The clothing trade was one of the most prosperous and raucous in Rome. There was a market, where very pretty girls screamed prices at the tops of their lungs to lure male customers into their booths. It was early evening – the coolest part of the day – and the market was crowded. Most of the clients were religious – priests and monks who desired to have a second – or third – set of clothes in which to, as Cesare muttered, ‘have adventures’.

‘I don’t see any women’s clothes,’ Swan said.

Cesare snorted. ‘Women don’t
buy
used clothes,’ he said. ‘Or dress up or pretend to be what they are not.’

Swan laughed. ‘Do you know any women?’ he asked.

As a young man, he was immediately drawn to the dark-haired beauty in a gown recut to show her ankles and breasts. It was dark blue velvet. She smiled at him, and he instantly wanted to buy from her.

Giovanni all but boxed his ears. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Swan smiled at the girl, but when she saw he was headed elsewhere, her eyes moved right through him and she was busy smiling at a young French priest behind him.

He followed Giovanni to a stall well up the middle street out of the market square. There was a dark awning; neatly folded shirts and braes and hose on a low cart in front, and a massive jumble of coats, jupons, doublets and short cloaks littering six tables stretching away into ever darker interior regions.

‘Foglio,’ Giovanni said, waving an arm like a man welcoming a guest into his home. ‘All the best clothing at the most reasonable prices.’

Cesare rolled his eyes. ‘If an Orsini dies, his clothes will be here in three hours,’ he said. He stepped out into the street and looked up. ‘Speaking of which, it is past six. What if I skip along and order dinner at Angela’s? And we’ll meet for mass, then eat and get laid?’

Giovanni put a hand over his eyes. ‘Really, Cesare! To speak of eating and mass in the same breath—’

Giannis smiled. ‘You are all going to hell. But you are poor heretics, so you know no better anyway.’ He nodded to Cesare. ‘I’ll accompany you.’

When the other two were gone, Giovanni turned. ‘What did you sell?’ he asked.

‘An heirloom,’ Swan said.

An old man came out of the shop. He bowed to Giovanni, and then turned to look at the Englishman.

‘This, I take it, is the customer?’ he said. His tone was acerbic, as if it was really too much bother for him to wait on anyone.

Swan smiled as ingratiatingly as he could manage.

Giovanni grinned. ‘He can pay,’ he said.

‘Ah!’ said the old man. He managed a smile. ‘I sell so much on credit.’

‘Last week, a young man who had bought on credit was killed in a street fight,’ Giovanni said. ‘When they took his corpse to be anointed, there was a man from Messire Siciliano here to take the clothes.’

Messer Siciliano shrugged. ‘What can I do?’ he said, as if he were the oppressed party. ‘And you cannot tell me the young scapegrace needed the clothes.’

The Englishman bowed. ‘I would like a suit of clothes. In fact, I would like two or even three suits of clothes. I would like them, if this is possible, in the Florentine style. I would also like that fine leather arming doublet with all the lacing points for armour.’

‘Florentine?’ snorted Giovanni. ‘Don’t be foolish. This is Roma. We don’t show our parts like Florentines, and we wear sober colours.’

‘I’m sure you do!’ Swan said.

Siciliano nodded. He went through the shirts, holding them up to his customer. He was quick. ‘No. No. Too much blackwork and the fabric is too light – good for a sodomite, not for you. No. Ah! Look at this. Mice teeth on the cuffs – superb work.’ He tossed Swan a linen shirt. Then he continued down the pile. ‘No. No. Oh, no. Too small. Made for a giant. Made for a humpback. Ah! Try this.’

It took an hour, and Giovanni was a great help, although it became increasingly clear that his tastes were very different from the Englishman’s. Besides the arming doublet, which Swan desired with all his soul, he got two doublets of wool – one scarlet, one black. He got two pairs of black hose that didn’t fit very well, and one pair of scarlet hose that fitted perfectly, as if made for him. He bought one pair of braes and two shirts.

‘You’ll want more linen,’ Giovanni said.

The Englishman nodded. ‘And I’ll buy it new. I’m not fussy, but I’m tired of wearing other men’s linens.’

Giovanni nodded. ‘I know a girl,’ he said. ‘She sews neatly and she’s fast.’

‘You can take the scarlet,’ Siciliano said. ‘The black and the spares need a little tailoring. I can have them for you tomorrow – the day after for sure.’

‘How much?’

‘In florins?’

‘Tell me in ducats.’

‘Ah? Venetian? In gold?’ asked the tailor.

‘Is there another kind?’ Swan muttered. He knew this process, too. The shopkeeper was making time while calculating.

‘Twenty ducats.’

‘Ricardo!’ Giovanni said. ‘For a friend!’

Siciliano pointed at the pile. ‘The arming doublet is worth half that by itself. The scarlet stuff was ten ducats a yard, new. The doublet has one small hole and no stains and is, if I may say so, beautifully made and fits like a glove. Eighteen.’

‘The arming doublet has a triangular hole under one arm where it failed its last wearer and a corresponding stain where his fluids rushed out,’ Swan pointed out. ‘The scarlet is excellent, and I’m at least the third owner. There’s a long strain mark in the wool from the last owner, and a fitting mark where it was recut from another garment.’ He sniffed. ‘And it smells of spikenard.’ He paused. ‘Fifteen.’

‘You bargain well for a foreigner,’ said Siciliano. ‘Don’t you need to be cutting throats or tupping sullied virgins? Isn’t fleecing a poor shop-owner beneath you? Seventeen.’

Swan met his eye and smiled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I
love
to haggle. Fifteen and a half.’

‘Fuck your mother, you waste my time. You are insulting my shop – and I did extra work for you, you sodomite! Give me back my clothes.’ The Roman reached out and tried to seize the bundle.

Swan held it out of his line of motion. ‘You forgot to add, sixteen and a half.’

Siciliano stopped, slapped his thigh and laughed. The laugh transformed his face – suddenly he didn’t look so old. ‘Bah! Sixteen.’

Swan counted down the coins, then stepped into the darkness behind the sixth table to change.

Giovanni called, ‘It’s all clean! He washes everything.’

‘I do not!’ Siciliano shouted. ‘My wife does.’

Swan came out, lacing his scarlet hose to his scarlet doublet. The shirt felt wonderful. Clean braes felt like heaven.

‘There’s a cloak that went with that suit,’ Siciliano said.

Now it was Swan’s turn to laugh. ‘Of course there was. I imagine it fits me as well as the rest.’

With a flourish, the Roman tailor produced it.

He hung it on the Englishman’s shoulders.

Swan looked down and saw that a whole corner was missing. He looked at the owner, who frowned.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It took some sword-cuts.’

In fact, it had three long cuts, carefully resewn with good scarlet thread, but still, in bright sunlight, a little . . . visible.

‘Two ducats,’ Siciliano said.

Swan rolled his eyes and handed over one more.

‘I knew you two would get along,’ Giovanni said as they walked on.

Evening mass was a major production at any church in Rome, but Giovanni led him to the former temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where the dome rose away in a magnificent sweep that engaged the young Englishman through the whole service. In the portico, they found Cesare just bowing deeply to a beautiful woman in a crimson gown with two blond slaves carrying her train. Giovanni swept a bow and Swan matched his bow.

Cesare reached his whole hand into the holy water font by the centre door and then extended his hand, dripping, towards the woman, who reached out and touched it with the slightest, the very slightest, of nods. She crossed herself, and swept by, dropping a veil of Bruges lace over her face.

‘You are a bold lecher,’ Giovanni hissed to his friend.

Cesare laughed. ‘You only live the one time,’ he said.

‘Cardinal Orsini’s whore,’ Giovanni said over his shoulder.

Giovanni had made a serious mistake. He thought that the Englishman was still at his left shoulder, but Swan had been separated in the push of the crowd as the woman passed them, and his comment was delivered, not to Swan, but to a liveried retainer. A man in Orsini livery.

The Orsini man’s fist lashed out, and Giovanni folded like a stool over the punch, a great
whoof
coming out of him. He fell, and another man in the Orsini red and yellow kicked him savagely.

There was a scream from a woman in the crowd, and some excitement. Cesare caught a blow on his shoulder and slammed both fists together into one of Giovanni’s assailants, who went down as if hit with an axe.

Swan saw the glint of a blade. He wasn’t wearing his sword. Few men did in Rome, at least before dark, and never to mass. But he had his knife.

The red and yellow livery was suddenly everywhere. Cesare caught one of them up and threw him bodily into two more.

The first tough who had hit Giovanni had a dagger in his fist. So did the man kicking him.

The first man saw Swan put a hand on his dagger. He changed direction, came at the Englishman, and his left hand shot out and took Swan by the throat.

Swan wrapped the offending arm with his own and broke the man’s arm in a lock. The snap of the bone was audible across the church. He twisted the broken arm and the man screamed.

Swan let him go. He drew his knife and the second man backed away from Giovanni. They eyed each other for a long heartbeat, and then the Orsini man put his dagger away and bent to pick up the man with the broken arm.

‘I am Adolfo,’ he said. ‘You will be hearing from us. You work for that schismatic Greek, yes?’

Swan smiled. ‘You serve that whore Orsini, yes?’

Adolfo stiffened.

‘Best run away,’ Swan said. He was enjoying this.

Cesare caught his arm. ‘Leave it alone. This is all a misunderstanding.’ He turned to Adolfo. ‘He’s a foreigner.’

Adolfo’s eyes sparkled. He had his dagger out again, and the church was empty. Even the priests and acolytes were gone. ‘Even if he kissed my feet, I would not forgive him.’

Perhaps it was the scarlet clothes. ‘It’s true, I misunderstood,’ Swan said. ‘My Italian is not so good. I did not mean that Cardinal Orsini was a whore. I mean
you
are a whore, you catamite bastard.’

The Roman leaped.

Swan didn’t move.

His arm shot out, and there followed a series of blows so fast that the bystanders couldn’t follow them.

Swan took a blow in the gut that wrenched him back against the temple wall. But the wall at his back steadied him, and he got a knee up in time to stop the blow to his groin. Then he and the Orsini thug had each other by the dagger wrists. The Roman was smaller than Swan, and Swan tried twice to head-butt the man—both blows were partly avoided, but the second gave him a fleeting advantage in balance.