Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Four

by Christian Cameron

  Tom Swan and the Last Spartans

  Volume Four: Glarenza

  Christian Cameron

  Contents

  Title Page

  Tom Swan and the Last Spartans: Volume Four: Glarenza

  Also by Christian Cameron

  Copyright

  Tom Swan and the Last Spartans

  Volume Four: Glarenza

  Tom Swan awoke slowly. A magnificent Greek sun, almost untouched by winter, poured in through the tall arched window across from his closed bed. The hangings had been opened and the fire in the curious Greek fireplace made up.

  He felt wonderful; clear headed and well rested, the best he had felt since getting wounded. He’d slept for a long time …

  ‘Clemente?’ he asked the empty room.

  ‘Despotes,’ said a voice. There was a boy standing like a statue by the door. ‘What is your pleasure, lord?’ he asked in Greek.

  Tom stretched like a cat. Demoiselle Sophia in my bed, naked and willing, would about cover the possibilities. The room was light and airy, and well appointed. It was in the Imperial Palace of the Despot Demetrios; it had been designed and built by the very best of the architects of Constantinople and Venice, and the stonework, the details and the hangings were magnificent.

  It was all a long way from a freezing tent in Albania.

  Swan rose, went to the window and looked out over the Vale of Sparta laid out like a green and brown map at his feet. The palace sat at the third level of Mistra, about halfway up the mountain, and it looked out over a four-hundred-foot drop to the road below. The fortress towered above it; a magnificent piece of modern military engineering.

  In Greek, Swan said, ‘Let my Clemente sleep in for once, but would you fetch me a little food and something to drink?’

  ‘Whatever the foreign lord wishes,’ the boy said, and went out through the door. Swan did some more stretching, trying to get his shoulder and back to respond properly; both needed exercise and were stiff.

  The boy returned with a tall amphora of wine and some bread and olive oil. The bread was stale, but Swan was a veteran of many days and nights in Greece and knew that this was what everyone ate. He rubbed his bread with a little garlic from a dish, dipped it in olive oil, and ate it with appetite. The wine was delicious; Sparta had good red wines, as good as Italian wines. The boy was horrified when Swan drank his morning wine neat, with no water added. But his expression made clear that this was just one of many horrors he expected from a foreign barbarian.

  Swan found his bags laid out on the floor; he noted that near-constant campaigning had all but ruined the linen canvas bag that held many of his possessions and that his leather saddle malle was very much the worse for wear. Like those of his company, whose armour was brown or worse. They had received new clothes and supplies from Venice; they needed time to sort them, to repair armour, polish it … most of the company’s crossbows had lost their heavy cords, owing to neglect, emergency and winter; they would all have to be replaced.

  On the other hand, Swan and his lieutenants had done the impossible; they had brought a company of lances across Albania from Belgrade to Mistra. Looking back over the string of fortunate incidents, lucky victories and miraculous communications, Swan was tempted to see the hand of God in his affairs, but his basic cynicism won out and the hand of Venice looked heavier.

  He smiled and finished the wine.

  By afternoon, the lower town of Mistra appeared to be under siege by Italians and Germans and English archers. Anxious Orthodox nuns scurried along the street; the city contained over a hundred churches, monasteries and nunneries, many of their occupants exiles from Constantinople; every second person on the street was a religious, and none of them liked the presence of so many armed foreigners, cursing, pushing into tailor’s shops and cutlers or leaning against the taverna walls, drinking their fill for the first time in months.

  ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ shouted Will Kendal at a particularly handsome nun in a very severe veil. There was no part of her showing, and yet her form and grace were obvious.

  ‘Master Kendal,’ Swan said.

  ‘I know, I know. Be an example.’ Kendal shook his head. ‘Ye know, Ser Thomas, before I met ye, I liked a jug o’ ale and a lass, and I seemed to find it easy to have either. An’ now that you’ve made me agent, I’m fuckin’ ruined. I can’t punch some lout in the street, I can’t grab a girl for a quick cuddle, and I drink wine, and the worst of it is that I don’t even want those things anymore. It’s like a fucking sickness.’

  He looked after the lithe form of the nun, swathed as she was from head to toe in dark grey wool.

  Ser Columbino, neatly dressed in dark red, appeared from the taverna. ‘Eh, Illustrio? Is there trouble?’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ Swan said. ‘Only I need everyone to know … bah. Bast. Get Orietto.’

  ‘Certo, Illustrio.’ Columbino bowed and went back into the dark, crowded interior. Swan followed him, and after a near-altercation with a table of archers, they borrowed Master Cressy and sat in a rough circle.

  ‘We’re here for a while,’ Swan said. ‘The Pope didn’t specify whether we were to serve Demetrios or Thomas; Demetrios rules from here to Monemvasia, and Thomas rules in the western Morea. Thomas is the Turk fighter, and Demetrios is the one who has Turkish allies, but this is where we were sent and we will play the hand as best we can. Understood?’

  Di Silva smiled with no humour. ‘So we do not trust our patrone?’

  ‘Exactly. Further, I may have to go; almost certainly. I will probably take some of the men-at-arms with me. I can’t say where or when yet. Columbino will remain, commanding the compagnia in the service of the Despot. The Pope is paying, so as of today everyone can expect regular pay. I have a financial instrument that I can cash on the Medici, here, and I will before I go.’

  Orietto nodded. ‘That’s good news. Most of the lads will be out of hard specie by tonight.’

  ‘How many Albanian girls did we bring away?’ Swan asked.

  There was a lot of shifting and moving eyes, especially from Orietto, who had an Albanian mistress with whom he was very obviously smitten.

  Columbino leaned back. ‘A few,’ he ventured.

  Swan nodded. ‘I venture it was more like fifty,’ he said. ‘It was the first thing the Despot mentioned this morning. This is a very religious city. The Despot tells me there is no prostitution here. And we are here on his sufferance.’

  ‘We’re here to save his worthless arse,’ Orietto said, and the rest nodded.

  ‘That is not how it appears to the Despot or his people. To them we are foreigners; perhaps as bad as Turks, perhaps worse. So here is my rede; if a man brought a woman here, she lives with him and on his pay as if they were married. No exceptions. Understood?’

  ‘What if a girl walks off on a man?’ Kendal asked.

  Swan’s voice hardened. ‘I’d recommend that not happen. If it does, we’ll see what we have to do. This seems a small thing. Let’s not make it a big thing. Also, any harassment of locals, especially nuns, will lead to some very severe punishments, and I’ll try and get to the bastard first, just to save the Despot the trouble.’

  Nods.

  ‘Any fighting?’ Orietto asked.

  ‘It’s winter,’ Swan said. He looked at Juan di Silva. ‘There isn’t a Turkish army within the Peloponnese, and with a little luck, it’ll stay that way all year. This could be the contract of a lifetime; good pay, and no fighting.’

  Di Silva frowned. ‘That’s a terrible contract,’ he said. ‘You spend all your time watching the lads, and they get in trouble. If there were Turks to fight, they’d be fine.’<
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  Swan was thinking of his audience with the Despot. ‘There may be fighting,’ he said carefully. ‘Our patron wishes to clear some castles held by his relatives. I have to decline to fight his brother, but otherwise, we will be used to try and clear the Albanian bandit chiefs and supporters of the Catacuzenoi.’

  Di Silva shook his head wearily. ‘You mean, now that we’re here, paid for by the Pope, we’ll be sent to help Greek Christians kill other Greek Christians.’ He frowned. ‘But surely the Despot’s generalissimo is a Catacuzenoi.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Yes, that about sums it up,’ he said. ‘How is this different from fighting in Italy?’ he asked.

  Columbino threw his hands in the air, a very Italian gesture. ‘There are no Turks just over the horizon in Italy,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ Swan asked.

  The next week was pleasant enough. The compagnia took exercise on the fields below the city, and the Despot was pleased to watch the muster and display. He was dressed in a thousand ducats’ worth of brocade, a little worn at the edges; he had a tiara over his tall Mongol hat, and was mounted on one of the finest horses Swan had ever seen.

  ‘You think you can stop the Turks with three hundred men?’ he asked.

  Swan shrugged. ‘Leonidas did,’ he said. But then he shook his head. ‘No, Majesty,’ he said, keeping his eyes carefully averted in the best Byzantine way. ‘But a handful of armoured Franks and some solid infantry can be useful in building a larger field force. We found this to be true at Belgrade.’

  ‘Why do the princes of the West never strike when they have the Turk down?’ the Despot asked. He shook his head wearily, as if his cynicism was a weight on his shoulders. ‘Why, instead of sending me a handful of mercenaries, however talented, do the Venetians and the Milanese and the French and the Holy Roman so-called Emperor not simply drive the Turks from all Romania?’ He glanced at Swan so quickly that Swan did not have time to look away, and he was staring the Despot in the eye.

  ‘Majesty …’ Swan began.

  ‘No, never mind,’ the Despot said. ‘In such a world, I would have nothing, and the Franks would own my country.’ He shrugged. ‘As it is, the Turks have it. Much of a muchness. They are demanding, but at least they are efficient. I understand them. You, I cannot understand.’

  Swan bowed in the saddle; there was nothing else to do. He trotted his Arab along the ranks. Everything was clean; the armour was polished again, the straps repaired, the men’s faces less drawn. Marco Corner once again looked seventeen and not sixty; Grazias had fewer lines on his face.

  He gave and received salutes, and the muster unfurled like a flag at dismissal; men trotted off, or stood in knots, talking.

  ‘Do we pass muster?’ Swan asked.

  The Despot smiled. ‘Am I even allowed to say no?’ he asked. ‘Your company is excellent. Better than any fighting force I have ever seen here. So? Most of the Albanian bandits in the hills can muster four times as many men.’

  ‘In most situations, I think my people can handle four times our numbers of Albanians,’ Swan said.

  ‘Simon Trapezetos has a thousand men and the friendship of Omar Reis,’ the Despot said. ‘He will test you, and then we’ll see.’

  That night, in the Taverna San Giorgio of Mistra, Swan outlined his orders.

  ‘Someone will test us in the next two weeks,’ he said, and Di Silva nodded. ‘I want Grazias out in the woods, and archers on duty by the horse herds, and a reserve of men-at-arms in full harness, every night.’

  There was a collective groan, but no protest.

  ‘Find out what you can about this Trapezetos,’ Swan said to them. ‘Soldiers talk.’

  Grazias nodded. ‘I know a little about him. Trapezetos is merely a nickname. He is a noble; his mother was Florentine from Achaea. He has a thousand horse and acts as if he is independent of both Sultan and despots. And I suspect he is. He has a castle over at Sellasia that is big enough for an army.’

  ‘How far is Sellasia?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Perhaps twenty leagues,’ Grazias said.

  Kendal whistled. ‘Cattle-raiding distance,’ he said. As a Borderer, that meant a great deal.

  ‘Exactly,’ Grazias said.

  Spring was creeping across Greece. They had two weeks of rain, which made night-time duty doubly oppressive and led to a great deal of damp grumbling, which Swan ignored. There were rumours of a Turkish incursion near Corinth, but no evidence emerged. The Despot proposed several ideas, all with an air of hopelessness; various hill castles that he was proposing might be taken with the aid of Swan’s artillery, which consisted of one Bohemian bronze falconet and one slightly larger captured Turkish piece from the battle at Mycenae.

  Every rainy night, Swan put on his harness and rode among his outposts, often with Grazias or Orietto or Di Silva or Columbino. The Greek captain, Catacuzenos, joined them in patrolling the roads. Swan had him watched discreetly by two of the English archers. He didn’t trust the Greek officer. The man had too many loyalties, too unevenly divided. He was proud, touchy, worried.

  He did seem like a very good soldier, though.

  So Swan had him watched.

  But the Greek nobleman seemed content to watch the Franks and provide some guidance on the web of roads and landmarks in the Vale of ancient Sparta, as well as conducting a sort of military tour for Swan and his officers.

  ‘I was one of the Plethon’s duller students,’ Catacuzenos said. ‘But I loved everything he said about the Ancients.’

  Swan produced his copy of Plethon from his saddle-bag and Catacuzenos warmed to him a little and began to speak of the great man. One night, after patrols, he knocked at one of the city’s monastery gates and took them to see Plethon’s tomb.

  ‘He was a great man,’ Catacuzenos said. ‘The church hated him when he was alive. Now, they venerate him.’ He shrugged. ‘This is Greece.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘It could as well be England or Italy. Listen, Strategos. You do not have to accompany us every night in the rain. We can patrol.’

  ‘The Despot bade me wait until you were proved,’ Catacuzenos said. ‘But my cousin was with you at Mycenae. And Grazias is a famous soldier, among my people. I would like to believe in you.’ The next night, Catacuzenos had with him two dozen pronoia cavalry, professional soldiers with equipment that looked Turkish. They knew the roads and Swan used them as guides through the fields.

  All they saw was sheep and rain.

  ‘Maybe our reputation is too strong for them,’ Orietto opined.

  ‘Maybe they’re smart enough to stay out of the rain,’ Columbino proposed. He had rain pouring down his face because there was no bill on his armet.

  A travelling Franciscan said mass for all of them and told them that there was a scandal in Rome; one of the banks had broken. Swan wondered whether he was jumping at shadows, but he found the presence of a Franciscan in Mistra more than a little suspicious. He thought, for the first time in a month, of the little black book of Cyriaco’s agents, and he leafed through it, found the sign and location for Mistra, and determined to build himself a network in the new Imperial capital.

  The issue of pay became pressing, and he forgot about his suspicions, went to the Medici factor for Mistra and was told that he could not negotiate a bill, even on a Medici bank, because the bank had no specie.

  ‘If my lord would go to Monamvasia,’ he said, ‘I am sure that Capretto there could find the two thousand florins Messire requires, but I’m not sure even the Despot in this town has that much ready money.’

  Swan fingered his beard, which, contrary to fashion, he’d grown quite long. It made him look older and more dignified with all the Greeks in theirs.

  ‘I was promised that you could cover my bills,’ he said. ‘Why do you have no specie?’

  Francesco, the factor, shrugged as if it was a matter of no moment.

  Swan nodded. ‘You know, a couple of months ago I was sitting in Cosimo di Medici’s office in his palazzo in Florence,’ he
said, name-dropping with purpose. His words went home like a master jouster’s lance. ‘I will certainly mention to him when I am in Florence that your office has insufficient specie.’

  ‘The Illustrious Ser Suane knows Medici Primo?’ Francesco asked. His face and voice betrayed a theatrical anxiety.

  ‘We have only met once,’ Swan said. ‘But as I am marrying a Florentine, I suspect we will meet again. I am an investor in the bank,’ he went on. ‘And I will not be fobbed off with some casual shrugs. Why do you have no specie?’

  Francesco stepped back as if struck. ‘I am not at liberty to discuss this,’ he said.

  Swan nodded. ‘Very well. I will say so in my report.’

  Francesco looked appalled. ‘Report?’

  Swan took the opportunity to shrug.

  ‘Perhaps I could raise so much with some of my own money,’ Francesco allowed.

  ‘Why do you have no specie?’ Swan asked again.

  ‘There is a shortage, Illustrio. I am sorry for my shrugs. I will find you the specie if I have to send a mule train to Monemvasia.’ He bowed.

  Swan nodded. ‘Good,’ he said.

  ‘Anyone know anything about banking?’ Swan asked. He wished he had either Violetta or Alexander Bembo with him. Either would know what he wanted to know. He tried to bludgeon his memory for everything Spinelli had said at the campfire about papal finance.

  Columbino made a gesture of aristocratic dismissal, almost perfectly echoed by the Portuguese, Di Silva.

  Kendal shrugged from an opposite class but equal ignorance.

  ‘Spinelli could tell me this in five minutes,’ Swan lamented.

  ‘Tell you what?’ Columbino asked.

  ‘Why the Florentine bank has no money,’ Swan said.

  No one could explain. Orietto was shocked. ‘Isn’t that what bankers do?’ he asked. ‘They have money?’

  ‘It comes from somewhere,’ Swan said, trying to remember what the Medici factors in Vienna had told him about papal banking. It had had very little to do with his life at the time; it hadn’t stuck.