Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 2

by Christian Cameron

  Swan bowed again. ‘For myself, it is a pleasure to be of service. Illustrio, I have known a secret or two in my time, brief as it has been, in Italy; it does no one a service to blab them. As for Messire Forteguerri, we are not rivals, as the Holy Father will almost certainly tell him when he returns to Rome. We had a misunderstanding because both of us sought the same man, but for different pieces of information.’

  Swan was aware that he was, in effect, demonstrating that he was a far better intelligence officer than Forteguerri. He was perfectly happy to do so.

  Cosimo di Medici sat back and made a steeple of his hands. ‘I do not like this treasure business,’ he said. ‘I sense you know things that I want to know.’

  Swan knew he was on a tightrope; or rather, perhaps, a sword blade. ‘I think it is possible, Illustrio. But I must tell you that I am bound to keep my master’s secrets. As, in fact, I will keep yours.’

  Di Medici nodded. ‘Of course.’ He considered. He looked at one of the two pieces of paper on his desk. ‘One of my nephews assures me that you saved our branch in Vienna at risk and cost to yourself.’

  Swan was stunned that he knew this already. But pleased. ‘Your nephew is too kind,’ he said.

  ‘So you have already done me a signal service and not mentioned it,’ Di Medici said. ‘I am disposed to let you go and wish you well. And hope that you do not hurry back to Rome. I understand that you go all the way to Belgrade. Is this correct?’

  ‘It is very likely but not guaranteed,’ Swan said. ‘I do not think I betray a confidence if I say that I hope to go all the way to Greece before I return.’

  Di Medici nodded. ‘The Pope took a great deal of money from Spinelli, did he not?’

  Swan paused.

  ‘Come, Ser Thomas. I can buy ten Spinellis. You cannot imagine I would break him. One of my cousins will marry his eldest daughter.’ Di Medici leaned forward.

  They were eye to eye. And Di Medici’s likeness to Bessarion served them both.

  Swan bowed. ‘Illustrio, I will trust you. God’s curse on you if you harm Messire Spinelli. Yes, the Pope hurt him. Spinelli can tell you the details. I will not even pretend to understand … some old debt not paid, and a new debt made bad.’

  ‘The tiara,’ Di Medici said. ‘I know you had it,’ he said.

  Swan shrugged.

  ‘And you are lending Spinelli your own money to save him,’ Di Medici said.

  ‘I see him as an excellent investment,’ Swan said.

  Cosimo di Medici stood up. ‘I see now why Bessarion uses you for everything,’ he said. He offered his hand. ‘Tell Spinelli what you told me. And tell him that I have ten thousand florins I’ll put in his coffers tomorrow morning and he need have no fears for his business. I think I am in your debt, Suane.’ He affixed a seal to one of the papers on his desk and licked his thumb when he burned it using the seal. He didn’t swear.

  ‘There’s your permission from the Council of Eight to do business in Florence,’ he said. ‘Your passports will be returned with a countersignature from me. I assure you, as one gentleman to another, that the Holy Father’s letters were never opened.’

  ‘Of course,’ Swan said.

  ‘If you choose to marry Sophia di Accaiauolo – not my business, but if this should transpire, Florence would be delighted to have you as a citizen. I feel that you have been honest with me, so I will tell you a piece of bad news. Useful. But bad. The Holy Father has not been honest with you, and your estate does not exist.’ Di Medici gave a we’re all men of the world look. ‘Whereas, Ser Thomas, any estate I grant is real. I suspect that Messire Loredan in Venice would say the same. I will say no more.’

  Swan bowed one more time, took his papers, and withdrew.

  The man-at-arms nodded to him. ‘He’s a pleasure to work for,’ the man said. ‘I’m Florio di Cavalcanti.’

  Swan stopped and exchanged a handshake. ‘Thomas Swan,’ he said. ‘I was thinking I was a count, but apparently …’

  Cavalcanti shrugged. ‘I’m a count. I don’t tell anyone, because my county is two vineyards and an inn. And titles are not the thing here.’ He smiled. ‘We have to stop by the chancery and get the Holy Father’s letters. He’s not maintaining a polite fiction, Ser Thomas. We didn’t open the letters.’

  Swan didn’t believe the man, but he didn’t have to care.

  Three hours later he was sitting with Spinelli in the church of San Croce, looking at the image of Doubting Thomas pressing his hand into the Saviour’s side.

  ‘Ten thousand florins,’ Spinelli said. ‘I’m still leaving banking. But this way, I will cover my debts and better.’

  ‘And I will be a small partner,’ Swan said.

  ‘In fact, I will be adding you to the silk business,’ Spinelli said. ‘The bank is saved, and that’s all it needs or deserves.’

  ‘You should change your man of business,’ Swan said. ‘No one else could have told Di Medici all these details.’

  Spinelli laughed. ‘He’s my cousin, and their cousin too,’ he said. ‘What do you expect of him? Wait until you marry this Accaiauolo girl, Suane. You’ll be in our web. Welcome to Florence. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone does business with everyone. If the Devil himself were a Florentine, we’d all do business with him.’

  ‘I know,’ Swan said.

  The road north from Florence had better inns, and Swan was free of the mule train and merchants. He and Clemente and Kendal, who had a magnificent new sheaf of arrows with peacock herl fletchings on his saddle, rode their Arabs and had a change of the same, like far richer men than they were. They moved like the wind, at least in part so that Swan could show any professional tail that he was in fact heading north.

  But the closer he got to Milan the more concerned he became about finding Sophia and about his reception. He had no reason to doubt Cosimo di Medici; his land grant in the Marche was probably false. That meant that he did not have an estate to offer her, and he wondered whether he should ride by.

  But he had announced himself to her brother. Who had not known she was in Milan. Did they detest each other? Was there some issue between them?

  Swan whistled, and thought dark thoughts, and played piquet with Will Kendal, who had got better.

  ‘I need to be paid,’ his archer said. ‘Clemente too. He’s your squire now, I think.’

  Swan put his hand to his forehead in mock surprise. ‘I had forgotten. I’ll pay in Venice. I have money there.’

  ‘We’re likely to run short of wine before that,’ Kendal said. ‘I only have cash now because I worked two days for the fletcher in Florence.’

  Swan upended his purse. He deftly fished out the Sultan’s diamond and found fifteen florins, three Venetian ducats and some Roman change. He divided it into three equal piles and shared it out.

  Both of his men thought that more than fair.

  ‘That diamond must be worth a fortune,’ Kendal said.

  ‘Too much for Florence,’ Swan said. ‘The more I think of it, the obvious buyer is either Hunyadi or the Sultan himself.’

  Clemente raised both eyebrows. ‘Oh, very good,’ he said. He gave his master a little bow of respect.

  ‘I have figured out the obvious way to find my lady. I will simply ask the archbishop’s chamberlain to find her, as if I have a message for her from her brother in Florence. Nothing more natural.’ Swan smiled.

  Clemente nodded. ‘I’ll ask about anyway,’ he said.

  Kendal shrugged. ‘I’m bored already,’ he admitted.

  The road to Milan was free of brigands, outraged husbands or any other adventure. Swan entered Milan on a market day, and was not even challenged at the gate.

  Milan was not a city he knew at all, and he gaped like a farm boy. It was a city of warm brick and enormous buildings; it seemed less friendly than Florence, colder and more authoritarian. Swan wanted very much to meet its new master, Sforza, but he had letters only to the archbishop. Sforza was the Pope’s ally and had, Swan knew, contributed both
money and goodwill to Hunyadi; the rumour was that Hunyadi had served Sforza’s father when the Hungarian was a young lance.

  Milan was full of soldiers. There were men in armour on street corners, and hand gunners training under the walls, the sulphur smell of their pieces recalling Belgrade and some black thoughts.

  Swan made his way to the archbishop’s palace and found the chamberlain almost immediately, and a servant offered them lodgings, which they accepted with alacrity, as the rooms were free. They were given rooms in an old dovecote that had just been refurbished for visiting notables, and Swan had two rooms and a fireplace. Autumn was coming, and Swan was glad of the fire.

  The chamberlain summoned Swan before evensong and then bowed deeply when Swan arrived in his office.

  ‘Really, ser knight! If you’d announced yourself,’ he said, all embarrassment like a goodwife in London caught in her shift on cleaning day.

  Swan smiled. ‘Ah, Father, I had no intention of deception. I’m just a messenger until I turn east for Hungary. And your steward gave me a lovely room.’

  Father Enrico, the chamberlain, nodded. ‘The new rooms are good. You know that the archbishop is very sick? He has not yet seen the Holy Father’s letter. Do you know the contents?’

  ‘Not a word,’ Swan said. ‘I suspect it’s about money.’

  Father Enrico spread his hands. ‘The Holy Father asks the impossible. We have no papal tithe or crusading money to send with you, Ser Thomas.’

  That’s not good.

  ‘I see. Very well. I’ll be on my way in the morning, then.’ He shrugged. It was not his problem, and there was no part of it he could influence, anyway. Church politics made war look simple. ‘I have a favour to ask, Father. I’m looking for a Florentine woman of good family, Sophia di Accaiauoli. She is a governess here, or so I’m told. I saw her brother in Florence.’

  Father Enrico shook his head. ‘If there were a Florentine in Milan as a governess,’ he said, ‘I’d know. The name has a familiar sound. I think the Venetian ambassador brought such a lady, but she left with him. Lord Loredan.’

  Swan’s heart lurched. ‘Of course,’ he said. She’d never said that she was living in Milan. Merely that she was headed there. She was not much on providing information about herself.

  ‘Well,’ Swan said, pretending to a joy he did not feel. ‘On to Venice, then. It’s my next stop.’

  Father Enrico looked embarrassed. ‘If the archbishop is better, I’ll ask him to see you.’

  ‘No need,’ Swan said.

  Enrico gave him a sharp look. ‘He is a great man, our archbishop. You know he was a soldier, like yourself? He was very careful in the collection of this money, and now it is gone. He will want to speak to you.’

  Swan saw Venice slipping farther and farther away.

  In fact, Swan found that his own small fame was going to retard his progress. He was indeed summoned to meet the archbishop, which would not have happened with most couriers.

  The archbishop met him unofficially, in a private solar high in the Episcopal Palace that the Visconti had built in the mid-fourteenth century. It was an old-fashioned room, with fresco decoration of the last century, brighter reds and more geometric shapes than anyone used in the modern age. The man on the bed was only just older than Swan, in his middle thirties, with the face of an ascetic saint and dark, intelligent eyes. He had his head up on pillows and a stack of parchments on a lap desk.

  ‘How can the Holy Father not know that I have already submitted all my tithes?’ the archbishop asked. ‘You are no common messenger, Ser Thomas. I know of you. Even my brother the duke knows your name. Hunyadi’s victory is on everyone’s lips. You have the ear of the Holy Father.’ The man was weak. He raised himself on the pillows and a monk, an Augustinian friar, came and held him.

  ‘You must tell him that someone has made an error and that error is for a substantial sum.’ The archbishop snapped his fingers, and for a moment, Swan could see the soldier this thin figure must have been.

  A tonsured clerk appeared and handed him a heavy ledger. ‘We submitted almost fourteen thousand Venetian ducats, Ser Thomas,’ he said. ‘Here, I freely show you the entries.’

  The monk looked at Swan from under heavy eyebrows. ‘Fra Gabriele has brought a reckoning to this diocese, ser knight. He has made them balance the books and give to the poor. His brother is building a hospital.’

  ‘Fra Joseph,’ the archbishop paused to breathe, ‘is too kind. But I will not see money wasted or misspent.’ He sighed. ‘The good God knows I did not want this role. But by the Virgin, if I am forced to it, I will do it.’

  ‘Did the money go to the Medici?’ Swan asked. ‘I’m sorry, Reverend Father, but I am not an intimate of the Holy Father.’

  ‘Yes, their bank,’ the archbishop said. ‘One of the new men. Look, it’s written here, but … I cannot make it out.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Swan admitted. He looked, and the tonsured clerk put spectacles of horn on the tip of his nose and peered carefully.

  It was illegible, more of an ink-blot than a signature.

  The archbishop waved a hand feebly and a bucket was brought, into which he was sick. Very little emerged, only fluid, and Swan wanted to retch in sympathy with the poor man’s heaving.

  He lay back for a moment. ‘My apologies, Ser Thomas. Will you go to Rome?’

  ‘Reverend Father, I do not know how this could have happened, but I must request you communicate directly with the Holy Father. As to me, I’m bound for Venice …’ Swan paused, because the archbishop, a very sick man indeed, was frowning.

  ‘I cannot send a messenger of your weight. And Ser Suane, there are other issues. I beg you will … see my brother.’ The archbishop lay back.

  The chamberlain, Enrico, put a hand on Swan’s arm. ‘He is exhausted,’ Enrico said. ‘But Duke Francesco will come later, and put some life in him. I wish you would stay long enough to have an interview with the duke.’

  Swan nodded, as Venice receded again. ‘I would be deeply honoured,’ he said. ‘What do the physicians say of the archbishop’s illness?’

  Enrico looked at the tonsured monk, who narrowed his eyes.

  ‘He has had two of our physicians, and the duke’s personal doctor from Bologna.’ Fra Joseph shrugged. ‘They cannot agree. He is very weak. One says his lungs are bad, another that he has a terrible tumour in his stomach.’ The friar frowned.

  Swan frowned too. ‘His heart is weak?’

  ‘He won’t stop vomiting, and he has signs of jaundice and other symptoms you can see for yourself,’ Fra Joseph said. ‘Yes, his pulse is erratic.’

  ‘You realise that this sounds like poison,’ Swan said quietly.

  Fra Joseph nodded. ‘So Duke Francesco said, yesterday.’ He looked at Fra Enrico, who nodded. ‘He is to bring an oil,’ Enrico whispered.

  Swan went and read Greek for a few hours. He was amazed and a little frightened to find how much of his Greek had slipped away; he struggled with some verbs, and wished for a dictionary, and at one point failed to recognise a participle and slipped off into a very bad reading, rescued only by a second participle in the same tense.

  ‘Belgrade has a lot to answer for,’ he muttered to Kendal. ‘I’m losing what little learning I ever had.’

  Kendal had gone for a walk and returned, angered and a little humiliated. Soldiers had sent him back because he was wearing a dagger, which was forbidden in Milan.

  He frowned. ‘I had a dream last night,’ he said. ‘About the man I shot.’ He looked away, out of the window with its beautifully leaded glass, over the archiepiscopal gardens.

  Swan nodded. ‘The man they were flaying alive?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Insane,’ Kendal said. ‘Christ, who does that? The Turks, that’s who.’

  Swan nodded.

  Kendal shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t ha’ had to shoot him. Sticks in my craw, like.’

  Swan nodded again, having very little to say that was of any use. ‘Mine, too. But … s
ince that might have been me … you saved him. You saved him more humiliation, more degradation, more pain. If it’d been me …’ Swan sighed.

  Kendal nodded. ‘You know what, sir? If’n it’d been you … I’d ’a known, eh? I know you. I know you’d want me to put an arrow in ye.’ He looked out of the window again. ‘I mislike it still. An’ I’ve killed a mort o’ men.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I understand.’

  ‘You know what else is odd?’ Kendal asked. ‘Yon monks. All treat me like I’m a landed man. A gentleman.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Your Italian is improving,’ he said. ‘Did you know that in Italian you sound … mmm … like a gentleman.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, your English is better. Less northern. More …’

  ‘More like yore’n?’ Kendal laughed. ‘It is, too. They twit me with it, the sods. The other archers. They say I talk like ye.’ He paused. ‘Sir.’ He frowned. ‘Except when I’m angered. Then I’m a northerner, right eno’.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘If you keep working for me, and you aren’t killed … you will eventually be accepted as a gentleman. You’ll note that in Italy, anyone who wears a sword …’

  ‘Aye, an’ Sforza’s da started as a ploughman, or so they say.’ Kendal nodded.

  ‘I know they say that, but I beg leave to doubt it. An adventurer and possibly a bandit, or at least his grandfather was, but they are old in war, the Sforza, or so Bessarion says.’ Swan tugged at his beard. ‘Can you read?’ he asked.

  ‘Better ’an Clemente, even in Italian,’ Kendal said. ‘Willoughby always had me do the clerking, an’ he’ll be making quite a fist o’ it now.’ Kendal nodded. ‘I rather fancy being a gent.’

  ‘Just so long as you recall that you need to keep me alive,’ Swan said. He lay back with his Greek.

  Francesco Sforza arrived later in the afternoon. He came on horseback with thirty attendants, and every one of them was a soldier. They were big, strong men, and even out of armour they seemed like giants. They also marched in step, something Swan had seen done only a few times. He watched them enter the central court and then fan out to take control of all the entrances to the palace, leaving just one pair with the duke himself.