Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 2

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Sometimes,’ Swan said. He put it in the scabbard and belted it on.

  It was very long. The point of the sword tapped against the wooden walls of the shop. The hilt came very high on his hip.

  ‘May I step outside?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Of course,’ the shopkeeper said, scenting a sale.

  Swan went out and drew. It was a difficult draw, and required a lot of clear space in front and behind.

  It was possible that the two rogues wanted to be seen.

  He rather hoped that the men following them were Loredan’s. But they were furtive and the one he’d absolutely seen three times looked Roman, from his pug nose to his brown-grey clerical doublet.

  ‘It is a masterpiece,’ the shopkeeper said.

  Swan nodded. He drew again, and passers-by gave him a wide berth. One gentleman favoured him with a smile, and another a frown.

  ‘How much?’ Swan asked.

  The shopkeeper raised his eyebrows. ‘Two hundred and fifty ducats. Perhaps I could do messire a small favour and say two hundred and forty.’

  Swan drew it again. Given the difficulty, there was a limit to what could happen off the draw. And Swan had begun to understand that many fights never went past the first cut and the first parry.

  If you could get it out, though.

  Swan thought that it was too light for war, although that would depend on the quality of the steel and other things.

  One of the bravos was gone. Pug Nose was crossing the street not ten paces away, and that told Swan where the missing bravo must have gone.

  ‘That’s a year’s wages for me,’ Swan said.

  ‘How much is your life worth?’ the shopkeeper responded.

  Both men smiled. Swan sheathed the sword and unbuckled the belt, and handed them over to the shopkeeper, who wrapped the belt dexterously around the scabbard and bowed.

  Swan spent the early afternoon fencing with Messire Vadi. The maestro was at leisure, with no students that afternoon by happy chance, and Swan spent two hours with him.

  ‘I used your three-part attack,’ he said, when they both paused to drink water. Swan was covered in sweat; Vadi had not yet removed his doublet.

  ‘Eh?’ asked the maestro.

  ‘You recall our last lesson?’ Swan asked.

  ‘When you got my best-paying student arrested?’ Vadi said. ‘How could I forget.’

  ‘You taught me the rotation from the low guard,’ Swan said.

  ‘Ah,’ Vadi said. ‘Yes. I was very interested in changing intentions and changing guards. I confess that I still am interested.’

  Swan nodded while the maestro outlined a theory on how a man’s mind made judgements, embellished with a quote from Aristotle.

  ‘You intend to publish something,’ Swan said.

  Vadi shrugged. ‘This is not a good life,’ he said. ‘Men think they are born knowing how to use a sword. They fancy themselves masters when they are actually fools. They fancy that a few lessons suffice to know the whole of the art. I want a patron; a single, good, wealthy, noble patron who will allow me to tutor his sons and perhaps his men-at-arms.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Myself, I can buy you a meal.’

  Vadi laughed. ‘Well, I have you from time to time, and Messire Bembo, as we now call him, who is perhaps the best student I will ever have.’ He swished his sword through the air. ‘What did you want to tell me? I am too full of my own problems.’

  ‘I used your guard-change attack,’ Swan said. ‘On the Sultan. I stabbed him in the thigh.’ Swan showed the exchange.

  Vadi threw down his sword and embraced Swan. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘You’ve made my day.’ He let Swan go and laughed. ‘The Sultan!’ He walked towards his window, made a random cut with his sword, and then came back, smiling.

  Swan expected another brilliant play from their lesson, but instead Vadi made him do very simple things over and over, cutting hard from his shoulder, over and over, and thrusting from a low line against a wooden pole, over and over. Swan was too much of a swordsman to question his master, but he felt a little humiliated to be practising such simple stuff, and more so when a pair of wealthier Venetians came and Vadi began to teach them a complex play from one of the older masters, Fiore.

  Another student came in and Vadi set him to teaching the two noblemen, and then he came back to Swan.

  ‘You have been injured perhaps?’ he asked.

  Swan admitted that he’d almost lost his eye, that he’d broken fingers on his hand, and that he’d injured his right shoulder not once but twice.

  Vadi nodded. ‘I am going to give you some exercises,’ he said. ‘Your injuries have caused you to favour certain things above other things. This makes you easier to read, and easier to fight. The more often a man is injured, the harder it is for him to do certain things.’ He stood in a guard.

  ‘Make a strong fendente to my head,’ he ordered.

  Swan cut.

  ‘Weak. Cut like you mean it.’ Vadi was expressionless.

  Swan gathered himself, found his inner poise, and cut.

  ‘Excellent. That is your cut; daring, fast. But when you favour the shoulder, you are both slow and cautious. You see?’

  Swan was rubbing his shoulder. ‘I see, but it hurts,’ he said.

  ‘Hence the exercises,’ Vadi said. ‘The restoration of your perfect cut is far more important than some fancy play you will only ever throw once.’

  Swan cut until his arms ached, learned the simple exercise the master taught, and then bathed in a basin, preparing to go to dinner.

  ‘Would you honour me by sharing a glass of wine tomorrow, maestro? And perhaps come to see a sword?’

  ‘Delighted. Also delighted to have you two days in a row, but your shoulder will be sore. Bathe it in cold water. Better yet, swim in the sea. Goodnight.’ Vadi waved.

  Swan bowed, but the maestro was already back to his students.

  Clemente was waiting at Ca’ Bembo.

  ‘I think they are only pretending to be bumpkins,’ he said. ‘They spotted me very quickly.’ He was not ashamed. ‘As soon as I was sure they were on to me, I ran.’

  ‘Good boy,’ Swan said.

  ‘I have reported them to Messire Loredan, and the others,’ Clemente said. ‘Messire Kendal says he was followed all day, but he did as you asked.’

  Kendal had been told to sit in an open-air taverna. Swan had dragged his whole pack past that square twice.

  ‘He’s visiting his lady,’ Clemente said. ‘If visiting is the word to use.’

  ‘Clemente,’ Swan warned.

  ‘Sorry, messire.’ The boy’s smile was unrepentant.

  But Kendal arrived in good order, looking particularly well turned out in his green wool doublet and hose.

  ‘The two men close to ye are both of they big men,’ he said. ‘I’d say soldiers. Tall, wide, both dark-haired. I did what you said and gave ’em names. I call ’em Curly and Wart.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Good names. I saw the wart, too.’

  ‘There’s at least three or four men behind them,’ Kendal said. ‘Very different. Lower-class, or dressed it, like workmen or even slaves, eh? Except one.’

  ‘Broken nose?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Aye, that’s as good as my name, Brown Shirt.’ Kendal smiled. ‘He looked a right bastard. I swear I know him from somewhere. I want to bludgeon my own head for it. I can’t find it. Something tells me Rimini.’

  Swan thought. ‘He looks a little like Alberti, but that bastard is a foot taller and far too self-important to be sneaking around Venice.’

  Kendal made a face. ‘I’m not for thinking they’re Loredan’s men. They speak Tuscan, not Veneziano.’

  ‘Well done, Will,’ Swan said. ‘So where are Loredan’s men?’

  ‘I never saw ’em,’ Kendal said.

  Swan scratched behind his beard and looked at Clemente. ‘If they had forty men instead of five …’

  Kendal shook his head. ‘Christ on the cross, milord. If they had for
ty men, we’d never see them.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Just so,’ he said. He wrote Loredan a note, sent it with Clemente, and changed for dinner.

  Loredan’s wife was as welcoming as she had been the first night. Swan bowed, chatted, and tried not to look over her shoulder for Sophia, but it proved that both Loredan and his governess were at church with the children, and Swan sat with Donna Bembo and made small talk.

  ‘You know he is to come to Hungary with you,’ she said. She wore plain brown and had a black veil thrown back over her head. Somehow she looked like a small but very elegant mouse.

  Swan had been hoping. Hints had been dropped.

  ‘Promise you will keep him alive,’ she said.

  Swan met her eyes and found them intelligent and fixed. ‘Usually he keeps me alive, ma donna,’ he said.

  She looked down. And then at him again.

  ‘But I will do my best to keep his skin as whole as my own,’ Swan said. ‘He is very dear to me.’

  ‘And me. We have this in common.’ She smiled and blushed a little. ‘Are you his lover?’

  Swan almost choked on his olive. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘He speaks of you all the time.’

  Swan coughed. ‘Um, no,’ he said. ‘I think I’d know if we’d been lovers,’ he added lightly.

  She laughed. It was spontaneous, and then she was less afraid of him.

  Bembo came in. They were sitting close, their heads almost touching, and Bembo froze for a moment, and Swan saw his sword-hand twitch, and he had the most delicious feeling that his friend was jealous. The irony of the possibility made him smile, but he took a chance and put his hand on the lady’s small hand. ‘I am just promising your wife to keep you alive in Hungary. But only if you promise to keep me alive as well.’

  Bembo deflated. ‘You English are so emotional,’ he said with a sneer, but the sneer was play-acting, and he put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘It is not certain I am going. But certainly, let us both live.’

  After dinner, Swan spoke of his day to Loredan and Bembo, and both men looked serious.

  ‘My people are aware of a great deal of activity,’ he said. ‘We think someone should deal with Messire Brandolini. Who has made threats.’

  ‘Can’t he be arrested?’ Bembo asked.

  Loredan shrugged. ‘If we arrest him, we have to disclose how much we know.’

  Bembo nodded and Swan bit back a curse.

  Loredan raised an eyebrow at Swan. ‘I think he works for Sforza’s secretary, Cicco. Cicco corresponds with Cosimo di Medici in code. You can draw any conclusion you like; I have no idea what game Cicco plays, because we can’t break his codes.’ He shrugged. ‘But to arrest a Milanese gentleman who has served Venice in the past as a soldier would be to admit we know of the man’s double role, and that’s a lot of information given away.’

  ‘Kill him,’ Bembo said.

  Swan grimaced. ‘Why don’t I just confront him?’ he suggested.

  ‘Excellent,’ Bembo said. ‘If you are killed, I’m spared the tedious trip to Hungary. Try to be more gentle than you were with Foscari’s nephew, eh?’

  The next day, with Kendal reinforced by Clemente and two of the Bembo family retainers, who seemed completely familiar with following people, he created his ‘nest’, as he called it, setting up a series of stations between Ca’ Bembo and Vadi’s salle under Bembo’s patient coaching. Later, after a late breakfast, Swan and Bembo, trailed by Bembo’s servant Umar, a North African, took an open boat by the Rialto and then walked across the Giudecca to fence. Afterwards, they were joined by Messire Vadi in crossing back to the main island to visit the sword shop.

  Vadi played with the sword. He grinned when he grasped it, and again when he raised it in the air. He was less impressed by its length and long draw.

  Swan left without purchasing the weapon and the three men walked into the late afternoon. Vadi shared wine with the two of them and then walked off to visit his mistress, and Swan picked up a note from Kendal as the archer brushed past him in the street and read the note at the glover’s when he picked up his finished gloves.

  ‘We have him,’ Swan said to Bembo.

  ‘Let’s pay the man a visit, then,’ Bembo said. He was much better at nonchalance than Swan. He whispered to Umar, who smiled silently and vanished.

  Heart beating, Swan went into the street and saw Clemente, who he followed, a corner or two back, across the Rialto Bridge and into the narrow streets on the other side. They walked a long way, for Venice, and the sun was setting when they took a gondola back across. At the west end of the Greek ghetto, close to the Arsenal, Bembo put his hand on Swan’s arm and they stopped in a little square by the sea. After a brief pause, a gondola came up, and Umar stepped off. He handed both men their swords.

  ‘Ready?’ Bembo asked.

  Swan nodded. He felt curiously indifferent, which was odd; usually he was keyed up until the violence started.

  They walked past an ancient walk-up tenement that had been built a century before for arsenali, the oarsmen and workers on the galleys, and there was a series of waterfront taverns. In the soft light of evening, with candles lit and torches out, they appeared welcoming, even beautiful. Swan had been on enough waterfronts to know better than to trust that beauty, but in the church of San Zaccaria a choir was practising. One singer, perhaps a castrato, sang with a passionate intensity, his voice soaring over the others, which sang in counterpoint.

  Clemente emerged from a sordid corner and made a small hand motion.

  Swan looked back. Umar had a bare blade in his hand and was already lounging against a low shed for drying nets. His smooth, handsome face looked far less elegant in the fading light.

  As Swan passed Clemente, the boy looked up. ‘Fourth building, second floor at the back. The other men are hanging back. The Brown Shirt.’

  Swan looked at Bembo, who paused. ‘I don’t like the fact that we still don’t know who Brown Shirt is,’ the Venetian said.

  ‘One enemy at a time,’ Swan said.

  Bembo held out a hand. It was shaking slightly. ‘I thought I was done with this,’ he said.

  Swan favoured him with a wry smile.

  The fourth building proved to be a typical tall Venetian building that was scarcely wider than its door. An internal courtyard was just visible through an iron gate at ground level, but it was clear that, owing to floods, nothing much happened there beyond storage.

  The iron gate was open. And had been oiled.

  Swan swung it open and walked in quickly.

  The courtyard was larger than he expected, shared by three or even four tall houses that overlooked it. It was already fully dark in the courtyard, but there were torches and lanterns.

  Two men were playing cards. As they entered, both men shot to their feet, and Swan could see, even by torchlight, that one of them was Brandolini, dressed entirely in black. The other was Curly, one of the men who’d followed him.

  ‘I thought it might be easier …’ Swan began, and Curly drew. He had a short, heavy sword, a good one with a hollow ground blade and a wheel pommel. It was in his hand and he was coming at Swan.

  Swan’s draw was the classic response; he drew from the scabbard, low and left, to a strong, high right-hand guard, his blade already in evidence, threatening the bigger man’s face and neck.

  Brandolini threw a knife, straight from the scabbard behind his back, in one flick of his arm.

  Bembo parried it, a lovely rising cut that Swan didn’t really see. His point clipped Swan’s ear.

  Swan made his cover and tried, first, to stab straight down into his opponent’s face, and secondly to rotate on their locked blades and put his pommel into the other man’s head or neck, but the bravo had been in some fights and he stepped to the side. Both men fell out of range, the blades coming apart. Swan had allowed himself to be turned, and consequently he had both adversaries to face while he blocked Bembo. He kicked the table that held the cards, feinted with
his hips and went the other way, right for the bravo. He thrust and the man stepped back, and Swan thrust again, now holding all the initiative and confident that his friend would handle the other man. Confident, too, in the length of his blade.

  Swan threw a fast cut from the middle, turned his blade as the man backed again and cut at his hands – always keeping the man at long range, dominating him, and pushing him back towards the wall.

  Desperate, perhaps, the bravo swung his short blade like an axe and Swan parried. His sword vibrated in his hand as he made his cover and stood his ground, even if that let the man with the shorter sword close the distance. Swan stepped in closer yet and tried to grapple with his left hand, aware that something was wrong. Curly slipped away and cut again, and Swan saw, as he parried, that his long sword had broken, leaving about two feet of blade.

  Quick as thought, Swan let go with his right hand and cut at the bravo left-handed. The heavier sword clashed with his and for a second they were locked together, edge to edge, and Swan’s right hand bent back. It seemed to take forever for his questing hand to find his dagger, and the other man began to press, aware something was wrong, pushing in, his strong right against Swan’s left. Swan’s right hand caught his dagger, and out it came, and he thrust into the man’s underarm. The bravo had maille under his clothes, but the blow must have hurt; some links burst, and there was blood. The bravo stumbled back, using the wall to support his back, and Swan kicked him between the legs, and then as he fell forward kneed him in the head and took his sword. He pivoted, the dagger now against the wretched hireling’s throat, looking for Bembo.

  Bembo had Brandolini at the point of his sword. The Milanese condottiere was on one knee.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ Swan called.

  Brandolini had been disarmed and it looked as if Bembo had broken his hand or arm as well.

  ‘I had a pretty speech ready,’ Swan said. ‘Your man preferred attacking me.’

  Brandolini mouthed something. He was clearly afraid; on his knee in his own blood. And Swan had seen Bembo kill.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ Swan asked.

  Brandolini looked more harrowed than Swan might have expected. His eyes went to Bembo’s blade.