Tom Swan and the Last Spartans 1

by Christian Cameron

  Swan nodded. ‘It’s Rome,’ he said. ‘There may always be a fight.’

  Kendal spat, and then went back and fetched his own sword belt.

  As they rode through the streets, Swan took time to show Kendal that they were being followed, and twice he paused in alleys to show his archer their pursuers, who were out-of-livery men-at-arms who stuck out like ebony statues in a snowstorm.

  ‘Do we lose them?’ Kendal said.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Swan replied. ‘For now, we make them as comfortable as possible. Do not look back. If you can make a natural reverse, like climbing a flight of stairs with a hairpin turn, then you can look back. When it is natural. Not until.’

  They passed through a gate, the Porto Viridaria, in the Passetto. The old walls were newly repaired. There were men in Colonna colours on the gate, and Swan saluted and rode through without explaining anything. Then they rode north. The papal castle was visible as a looming presence just to the south, by the Tiber. Spinelli had done very well for himself, with a fine villa in sight of the Vatican.

  Spinelli’s property was not large, but it was in a magnificent location, close to a major crossroads, and near the small stone bridge over the Sposata, a stream that flowed year round, although it was only a trickle in August. Swan didn’t have to cross it to get to the villa but he noted it; it smelled bad. Even by Roman standards. It smelled as if there was a dead animal in it; not an infrequent occurrence.

  The villa was carefully boarded up. What puzzled Swan was the absence of staff.

  He pointed this out to Kendal. ‘Who leaves a small palace unattended?’ he asked. Swan dismounted, leaving his horse with Kendal, walked around the stone building and then poked into the outbuildings.

  A horse called from the stable, and then more urgently, as if it had been waiting for a person.

  The stable door responded to some persuasion, and inside Swan found tools, sacks of grain with mice already at them, and a good wool rain cloak hanging on a peg. He searched it automatically and found a concealed pocket that was empty.

  He sighed.

  Then he went into the main portion of the stable and found the horse, which was rather insistently kicking his empty manger. He gave the horse grain, and water. He considered taking the horse with him.

  He couldn’t decide.

  He walked back across the stable yard to Kendal, who had retired to the shade of a citrus tree in a very pretty arbour.

  ‘The two bastards is still watching us,’ Kendal said.

  ‘I’m going to break into the house,’ Swan said reluctantly. ‘Tell me if one of them rides away.’

  Swan went back to the house, walked around it for a minute, and then chose his portal. It was the servants’ entrance to the working yard, and it was guarded by a pair of outer shutters or light doors. He pushed gently, knocked, called out, and then drew his dagger and slipped it between the doors. With gentle pressure he located the crossbar, which he lifted with the dagger blade.

  The two doors, when open, revealed a much heavier pair of doors inside. Swan muttered his new curse, pushed and prodded, grunted in frustration, and eventually drew his long sword and slid the blade between the doors. The designers probably hadn’t expected a man who would risk a four-foot blade with a heavy ricasso, and Swan suspected his swordsmith would have been appalled, but the blade did the work, and he waggled it in the crack between the doors and slid the heavy bar inch by inch, using the sharp edge to nudge the bar a little at a time until he had the door free.

  He pushed the left-hand door open and slid the bar all the way into its recess.

  He walked into the kitchen. It smelled good; garlic, cheese, hanging sausage. There was a small fortune in pans, coppers and iron too, and an array of skillets that Swan’s mother might have killed for.

  He pursed his lips and walked in. He sheathed his sword and kept his dagger to hand.

  He was on the ground floor; kitchen and servants’ rooms. Swan went up the central service stairs and found four rooms. Without leaving the stairs he could see a fine triptych of St Stephan. There was very little furniture. Swan went along the short hall to see whether the master had an office, but if he did, it wasn’t on this floor; there was a very formal room, and two rooms absolutely empty except for a hanging portrait of a young woman in oils and another fine icon, this one of St Thomas.

  Tom Swan had a soft spot for St Thomas, and he looked at it. It was, in fact, a very valuable icon indeed, rich in gold leaf, beautifully rendered.

  He went to the stairs. The house was not very big, at least by the standards of the rich. Swan had been twice when the man himself was in possession; both times at the end of the day. Both times Spinelli had come down.

  Swan went up cautiously.

  He was disappointed. The rooms on the upper floor were almost completely empty; not even a bed. The front chamber had a single low trunk, or box, with beautiful iron hardware. It was not locked, and Swan opened it and found books; six books, a small fortune in and of itself.

  He leafed through an illuminated ‘Romance of Troy’, and frowned.

  ‘Cap’n!’ shouted Kendal.

  Swan put the book back into the box and ran down the stairs.

  ‘One o’ the bastards slipped me. Now there’s dust. Over there … by the city. Not the Castello.’ Kendal pointed. ‘I called!’ he said. ‘You didna answer.’

  ‘Didn’t hear you,’ Swan admitted. He shaded his eyes with his hand. It was another blistering day, and any degree of exertion seemed absurd. But … there were riders coming fast out of the distant gate, shiny black dots that raised dust.

  In his busy head, he fretted about the good cloak with the secret pocket and the horse in the stable. And about the books and icons, which were, altogether, worth well over a thousand ducats. A fortune. In an empty house.

  He walked back to the stable. ‘We’ll ride south over the bridge,’ he said, ‘until we’re safe.’ He ducked back into the stable and looked at the floor.

  This time he noticed that lot of straw had been moved about, as if there had been a scuffle. He knelt, put his fingers to the dark moisture and sniffed. Blood. Not a great deal, but enough to stay damp on straw.

  He opened the stall’s wicket and bridled the long-neglected horse. He found the saddle ready to hand on the stall partition as if someone had been interrupted in the process of tacking up.

  ‘Best hurry!’ Kendal shouted.

  ‘Let’s go out the garden gate,’ Swan said. Both times when he had come, he had arrived from La Croce to the north, but now he led Kendal and their horses out through the front gate, on to a narrow lane lined by high stone walls.

  ‘North,’ he said. ‘Across La Sposata.’

  The little stream smelled so bad the horses shied; a warm, sticky, sweet smell of decay. The ground by the stone bridge was muddy and ugly, and Swan’s Arab mare tossed her head. He had the other mare by a lead and she wasn’t particularly pleased by the arrangement.

  He looked back, but the high walls cut off any view of their pursuers. He cursed, backed his unwilling horse, talked to her, stroked her head and nose with his hands, and calmed her.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ said Kendal. ‘Christ, this ’ere stinks.’

  Swan managed to control his mount and her fears; to back her to get to a point where he could see over the curtain wall. He knelt on his saddle and trusted his skittish horse. He told her he loved her. He ignored the borrowed mount behind him.

  He had to know.

  His Arab obeyed him, standing stock still despite her fear. He got high enough to loop an arm over the top of the wall and look down at the upstream side of the arched stone bridge.

  There was a body blocking the culvert. He could see boots and a bloated hand.

  His gorge rose, despite all his experience with corpses. He saw nothing for a moment – then he was under the earth fighting with a dagger; standing in the sun in Belgrade with a boy’s brains across his face and on his lips. He made himself
breathe.

  ‘Sir!’ hissed Kendal.

  Swan could hear hoof beats in the courtyard, about fifty paces behind him. They were still hidden by the walls of the villa, but …

  He got control of himself, as he had controlled the mare. He dropped back into his saddle and nodded. Both men dismounted and led their horses over the bridge as quietly as they could manage, and then they were in the maze of walls and lanes on the far side of the stream. In a few minutes they were clear of any pursuit; across the sluggish stream and riding west.

  ‘You stole a horse?’ Kendal asked.

  ‘Hmm,’ Swan muttered.

  San Silvestro was an ancient church, and it was clearly waiting for a powerful cardinal with excess treasure to beautify it. Swan asked a porter for the Augustan, Di Montserrat. He was taken to a powerful-looking churchman in a long gown of wool, despite the weather, and wearing a cowled robe over his gown. His fine linen shirt was almost his only nod to affluence, along with the red coral paternoster in his cincture.

  ‘My son?’ he asked.

  Swan gave him Bessarion’s note. The man smiled at the seal and name, and more at the contents.

  ‘Bessarion. How I honour him. How can I help you, young man?’ he asked.

  Swan was invited to sit. They were in the rector’s apartment, which Di Montserrat seemed to be sharing.

  ‘I am looking for Tommaso di Spinelli,’ he said. ‘I was told you and your order might know something of him.’

  ‘Ah,’ Di Montserrat said. He steepled his hands. ‘I am not at liberty to speak of Messire Spinelli,’ he said. ‘But for Bessarion, I will allow you to read something.’ He went to a table and found a legal document on creamy new parchment. It had six seals appended.

  Swan took it and read it quickly. The Latin was obscure, but the purport was obvious. It was a donation, in its entirety, of the Villa Spinelli to the monks of the Augustan order, dated August fifteenth.

  ‘Do you receive the contents of the house as well?’ he asked.

  Di Montserrat frowned. ‘I find your question impertinent,’ he said. ‘You read Latin?’ he asked in patronising surprise.

  Swan nodded. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said.

  Swan found Kendal and the two of them mounted. The Arabs, loot from Belgrade, were not even tired.

  ‘Sir?’ Kendal asked.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Are we ever gettin’ back to Venice, sir?’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ Swan said bitterly. ‘Rome is a cesspit.’

  They rode halfway around the city to enter by a gate Swan trusted, manned by friendly mercenaries. Swan left them a tip. He began to imagine a future in which he was going to have to leave Rome very quickly.

  ‘I’m going to clean up and go to a very fancy brothel,’ Swan said. ‘I do not expect this to be dangerous, although I’m going to meet dangerous people. Care to come?’

  Kendal scratched under his chin. ‘Fancy as in not for the likes o’ me?’ he asked.

  Swan shrugged. ‘I’m sure they’d serve you, if you pay.’

  Kendal sneered. ‘I’d ha’ to be paid. By someone … if you catch my drift.’

  Swan sighed. ‘I haven’t been paid since you were,’ he said, but he knew it sounded weak. He was, to Kendal, the captain of a company. Not a penniless adventurer.

  ‘Nah, I’ll come just to see wha’ it’s like. An’ cover your back. Sir.’ Kendal laughed. ‘You could just say.’

  Swan nodded. ‘I’m out of the habit.’

  At Bessarion’s, he bathed and changed and put on better clothes while Clemente reported what he had learned between the kitchens of the Castello and the markets along the Tiber.

  He’d learned a fair amount. It was unsurprising to Swan how much the servant class knew about the doings of their betters, but it began to amuse him, in a dark way, that the Pope might have got his answers by asking a servant in his own palace.

  He took Kendal and Clemente to the clothing market towards the end of the day, and bought them both suits of presentable clothes – not livery, but clothes that were difficult for anyone to pin down at a glance as to profession or class. Clemente opted for clerical brown, like Swan’s own; Kendal chose a suit of green that was both finely made and fitted his long frame.

  ‘You look a little like a Roman Robin Hood,’ Swan said, and Kendal flushed with pleasure. He proved to have money of his own. He purchased a fur hat and wore it despite the heat.

  An hour later, and they were back at Bessarion’s in time to find Francesco sitting in the kitchen, being fed by Alceste, who liked people who ate well. The boy was clean, and his hair proved to be quite a bright blond.

  Swan sat down opposite the boy and took an apple tart. Alceste put a pitcher of wine on the table, and undercooks began to cut a pie.

  ‘Messire does us the honour of dining in tonight?’ Alceste asked.

  ‘Messire and his whole entourage,’ Swan said in a slight and mocking lisp. ‘As well as Cardinal Dirty-hair here.’

  Alceste laughed. ‘Good to have you back, messire, although you are now a little fine to eat in the kitchen, eh?’

  Swan shook his head and laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let me talk to this ruffian.’

  ‘He’s a bad one,’ Alceste said. ‘He’s already tried to lift two silver spoons and he fought the bath like the whole college of cardinals was going to bugger him.’

  Swan turned to the boy. ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘The carter is in a tenement in the south of the city. I can take you there. But I can tell you all he knows, too. Ten ducats.’ The boy was shaking – afraid, but bold.

  Swan liked him. ‘So can I,’ he said. ‘Let me save ten ducats. The carter moved Spinelli out of Rome on the sixteenth. To Florence.’

  The boy’s face fell.

  Swan laughed. Clemente laughed as hard. Kendal drank wine.

  ‘When you talk Italian that fast, I can’t understand a word,’ Kendal said. ‘An’ I been here for five years.’

  Swan counted down five golden ducats. ‘You did your part. Here’s your payment. There’s your meal. How long do you think you’ll live with five ducats in your pocket? Do you have a protector?’

  The boy looked down. ‘My dad’s dead. Mama too.’ He looked up.

  ‘How are you with horses?’ Swan asked.

  The boy shrugged. ‘Not very good.’

  ‘Pretty fair at spying, though,’ Swan said. ‘And you can learn to care for horses. Want to work here, for a cardinal?’

  There was a long pause. ‘Yes,’ the boy said.

  Swan nodded. ‘Fetch Giannis,’ he said to Clemente.

  To Giannis, he said, ‘Send him to watch Forteguerri. If I had extra people, I’d put someone on Cardinal Piccolomini. Ask the Other Dmitri to watch Antonelli.’

  ‘Antonelli has hundreds of customers every day.’ Giannis raised an eyebrow. ‘This is a foolish mission.’

  ‘Humour me,’ Swan said. ‘I’m pretending to be Alessandro.’

  ‘You aren’t very good at it yet,’ Giannis said. But he smiled, and Swan smiled back.

  ‘What are we all looking for?’ Giannis asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I’m rather expecting Messire Forteguerri to leave Rome for Tuscany. I want to know when he does.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a dead man plugging up one of the pipes in the little bridge over the Sposata. Do we have a bravo or two we can send to fetch it?’

  Giannis tugged his own beard. ‘Now you sound more like Alessandro. What a disgusting job. I’ll pay someone.’

  The sun had finally gone down, taking the worst of the heat with it, when Swan presented himself at Donna’s door. This time he was admitted without fuss, and taken through the anteroom with the plain walls, and to the tapestry room.

  Donna Lucrezia was dressed more extravagantly. Her shoulders were bare, and she wore a musky perfume.

  Swan was not invited to sit. He opened his purse – the Sultan’s diamond was in his pillow at Bessarion’s – and emptied it.
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  ‘I’m five ducats short,’ he admitted. ‘I had to pay for some information and some used clothes. I’ll make it up to you, but I’m out of money and credit just now.’ He shrugged.

  She laughed. ‘And you think I won’t kill you for five ducats?’ she asked.

  Swan leaned forward. ‘Donna, I’m quite sure you would kill me for five ducats, especially if I threatened your good name. On the other hand, you know everything, so I suspect you know for whom I spent the five ducats, and why my credit with you should be secure.’

  She nodded. ‘I don’t know everything. You move very fast, Messire Swan, and I do not have the time or money to spend on hunting you.’ She frowned. ‘And Cesare is so much duller than he used to be. Do you expect to give me short change and still hear my news?’

  ‘He’s in Florence,’ Swan said. ‘Spinelli, I mean.’

  She laughed. It was almost a giggle. ‘There’s your five ducats,’ she said. ‘You told me. I thought he was in hiding.’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I’d wager he’s not,’ Swan said. ‘I think he cut his losses and fled. I’d still like to know why the Pope is looking for him. Or pretending to look for him.’

  She got up as she had the day before and came around her desk. She was shorter than he by a head, and she smelled like a very fleshy heaven. ‘I can tell you that,’ she said softly. ‘I wonder what it is worth to you?’

  Swan closed his eyes and thought again of Belgrade. The place was like a scar in his head, like fighting under the earth on Rhodes. He thought, too, how he could be dead, and was not. He inhaled her fragrance.

  ‘Donna, it’s not really worth anything to me, as I am working for the Pope. I can’t ask him, but professionally, I don’t really care. It is the merest curiosity.’ He shrugged.

  She leaned close. She wore a jewelled cross that sparkled between her breasts. Swan tried to imagine her going to mass; to confession. Continuing to worship while she profited from the laxity and corruption of the Church.

  It occurred to him that he continued to worship.

  He smiled at her. She was probably evil to the very core; he knew she corrupted young girls, and he suspected she’d kidnapped at least one beauty, and he had heard rumours of horrors. But somehow, she was … a peer.