‘Christe, lad. I was thinking you were dead, but look, you haf not died.’ He laughed again. Ser Columbino frowned at the laughter – he had been one of the worst-wounded men who still tried to make the ride, and he was finally recovering, and he clearly found Peter vulgar.
Swan disarmed him with a smile. ‘He knows me too well,’ he said. ‘Speaking of which, I want to rectify a few small matters. Clemente, fetch me Di Vecchio.’
The boy had a small horse which he rode better each day, and he took the opportunity of a better, broader road to canter back along the column.
He returned some minutes later. Swan had learned to send his stradiotes ahead, every day, to the inns, to be sure they had the stables and fodder and food for his force. One night on a windswept hillside without food or fodder had almost ruined his whole force and had reinforced the lesson.
As Grazias approached from the direction of the great Bavarian town, Di Vecchio came up the halted column. He reined in a pace from Swan and nodded coolly.
‘Yes?’ he asked. He was neither courteous nor discourteous.
Swan smiled pleasantly. ‘Messer Di Santo,’ he said. ‘A cavalier? Or merely a man-at-arms?’
‘He leads his own lance,’ Di Vecchio said.
‘Please inform him that if I see him again with his surcoat flapping like a sail and his harness unbuckled, he will need work,’ Swan said.
Di Vecchio shrugged. ‘Tell him yourself,’ he said.
Swan’s smile was still pleasant. ‘Messer Di Vecchio – we are riding to fight the Turks. I have some experience of fighting them. You will please obey my orders.’
Di Vecchio shrugged. ‘Why?’ he asked mildly enough. ‘If a merchant hires me, he does not have permission to tell me how to wear my harness. That’s my business.’
Ser Columbino put his hand on his sword.
Swan frowned. ‘I’m paying you,’ he said. ‘And I would like your lances to begin to look a little more professional. Like Ser Columbino’s.’
Di Vecchio’s smile was nasty. ‘Ser Columbino was still shitting green when I started killing,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I should say, his father was still selling out his comrades.’
‘Don’t draw,’ Swan said instantly. He reached out, put a hand on Columbino’s armoured shoulder, and then turned his horse to face Di Vecchio.
‘I want to understand you, Di Vecchio. I have done you a personal service and saved your life. I have protected you from the wrath of Venice and I’m putting you in the way of earning a good deal of money. Why behave like this?’
‘You will never pay us,’ Di Vecchio said wearily. ‘Everyone knows this is a one-way trip. Please do not expect us to play soldier on the way.’ He turned his horse. He wasn’t aggressive. He was merely … certain.
‘I will kill him,’ Ser Columbino said. ‘He has insulted my honour.’
Swan considered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What he says is, in each case, the truth as he sees it.’
Peter nodded.
Swan raised an eyebrow to Ser Columbino, whose hand was back on his sword. ‘I mean no offence – Christe, Columbino, between you and Will Kendal I feel as if we’re going to end up in a killing spree. Put up, sir.’
Ser Columbino did not find him funny, and retired in resentment.
Swan looked at Peter. Peter shrugged.
‘Di Vecchio’s got a point,’ he said.
Swan shook his head. ‘I know,’ he said, and cursed.
The good burghers of Villach reported that Cardinal Carvajal was raising an army of German crusaders at Vienna. They surprised him by donating his night’s lodging and that of all his hundred and eighty men and women, and two local knights, well mounted, asked his permission to join the column. Swan assigned them to Ser Columbino. Both men spoke good Italian and Sternz, the elder, spoke some Latin. Villach also furnished them with four good wagons and the draught animals to pull them.
Four days’ travel brought them to Graz, the crossroads of southern Austria. There Swan faced a difficult decision, in that there was a road – a good road – south into Serbia from Graz, and once he passed it, he was adding days to his journey to Belgrade. If, indeed, he was going to Belgrade.
The word in Graz was that Ladislav V, King of Hungary, had left the Diet at Budapest, told his noblemen that he was going hunting, and then had taken his favourite, Count Cilli, and ridden straight west for Vienna, arriving just days before. Swan wondered for a few minutes what source Bessarion had that allowed him to hear of the King’s flight in distant Rome and pass the information via Venice all the way to Udine, but Bessarion had the best intelligence network in Europe. In fact, it made Swan feel a little proud – and delighted to know that he was not alone.
It also occurred to him that Accudi might just be in Vienna. The thought pleased him. Giovanni Accudi, gentleman notary, was a distant descendant of the famous English condottiere John Hawkwood, and he was a first-rate mind, a capable sword, and another of Bessarion’s trusted men. He hadn’t been in Rome for the election, and suddenly the various tales of his absence made more sense. He wasn’t getting married. He was on a mission.
Swan liked Graz – a pretty town. As the commander of a powerful force, a crusader and a knight, he stayed at the castle while most of his men went into the barracks and the rooms of six inns. Swan was shown where the famous King Richard the Lion-Hearted had stayed, and where Henry IV had stayed. He wondered whether anyone would ever note that Tom Swan had stayed there.
Ser Thomas Swan. He smiled a great deal.
That evening, he was invited to play piquet with the Imperial knight and the count and several prominent local men – the two judges who seemed to divide the duties that in London would have been held by a mayor, and several local gentlemen. The company was exclusively male, which bored Swan considerably, and the men spoke mostly German, falling back on a thickly accented and difficult Latin when they wished to include Swan, which was seldom.
Swan had worked hard on a fledgling Hungarian, but he had no German. He couldn’t talk, and he couldn’t flirt, and that left only one outlet for his energy.
He paid close attention to his cards. The cards themselves were beautiful, each one hand-painted in heraldic colours, and the suits were not any suits that Swan had seen in Italy, but the ducks and rabbits and boars and roses were entertaining.
The habit of the local gentry was to play with a partner for three full games and then switch partners, so that in the course of an evening each man faced each of the other guests. Two hours after they had begun, all the men except Hans von Zuckner, the Imperial knight, were so drunk that most could only sit and laugh and turn their cards. Zuckner was fleecing them carefully. Swan did the same. He didn’t require very good cards and he was cautious, because it was dangerous to be a foreigner in a situation like this.
It was a long evening. Swan drank carefully, to appear to be drinking, and he noted that Zuckner did the same – and also avoided playing Swan.
Swan was very careful returning to his room, as he’d just taken half a thousand ducats in a single evening.
Peter was waiting for him.
Swan closed the door carefully and counted out sixty ducats. ‘Your pay,’ he said.
Peter laughed aloud. ‘By Gott,’ he said. ‘The little joke is becoming somethink, eh?’
Swan smiled back. ‘Now you earn it by making sure I get out of here alive.’ He showed the other four hundred and some odd coins, and Peter shook his head. ‘It is a fortune.’
Swan nodded. ‘A fair amount of oats,’ he admitted, and went to sleep.
The surge of income gave him an idea, and the next evening, at a fortress-like inn on the Vienna road north of Graz, Swan summoned all the leaders of lances – easier, when all of them were housed in one building.
He sat at a table in the courtyard on a very pleasant evening, seated Ser Columbino and Di Vecchio with their own cups of wine, and proceeded to pay every lance – and his English archers – a month’s wages. It cost him all his win
nings and another hundred ducats out of his purse – almost all his ready cash – but they were two days from Vienna and he felt the risk was worth the gain.
Ser Nicolas Zane – the one his friends called ‘the Stone Barn’ because of his size – scooped his take into his big woollen hat and nodded. ‘You are like a good wine,’ he said to Swan. ‘You improve with age. Pay us again in a month and even these awkward sods will start to think better of you.’ He waved airily at Di Vecchio’s lances.
Before the last musical sound of gold clinking on gold had passed on the evening wind, the courtyard was full of gypsies playing music and people dancing. Women appeared as if by magic – or summoned by the clinking gold – and there were many voices singing.
Swan watched them all, a little detached, and in the end went to bed alone and sober.
He was finding command an intolerable burden – like chastity.
Morning – another brisk morning in shades of grey and pink, and there was frost on the buckets and frost on the horse troughs, and the site of a young woman in her shift at the well caused Swan to think he needed to do something or perhaps lose his ability to think rationally.
Swan was standing at the well in his hose, his doublet over his arm, because he’d woken with the dawn and decided to shave, and no one was up to heat him water. He’d grown up in an inn. He knew how to heat water, and he was aware enough of his social duties to know that if he rose and heated his own water he had to do it with the secrecy of an illicit love affair, which is why he was trying to look like a servant while he ogled the woman who had beaten him to the well.
He was still trying not to admire her figure when a cavalcade arrived behind him at the inn gate. There were only six men – a pair of soldiers, a gentleman and three servants. One of the soldiers--the best dressed--was a black African, tall, handsome, and dangerous-looking. They ignored Swan, who looked like a servant. One of the men-at-arms--not the African, but a handsome young blond man, seventeen or eighteen--called out to the woman – in French.
She kept her back to him and continued washing her feet.
Swan spoke French – better than the man-at-arms. He continued to try to look inoffensive.
‘Shut up, Marc,’ called the gentleman. ‘Nothing, please, to draw attention to us.’
The woman glanced at them – and froze. She’d been in some private dream, perhaps, but she was suddenly aware that she was one sheet of linen from nudity, in a courtyard full of men. She froze.
The soldiers laughed. It wasn’t nasty – Swan didn’t see any edge. Yet …
‘Marc!’ spat the gent. ‘Two rooms.’
‘The inn isn’t even awake.' It was the black man speaking. His French was educated and Parisian. 'You – potboy!’ He aimed a casual swipe at Swan.
Swan evaded and smiled. ‘How can I help you, sir?’
‘The count of … that is, a private gentleman wants a room, and another for his people.’ The black man-at-arms sneered. ‘Be quick and you’ll have a piece of silver. Be slow and I’ll beat you.’
Swan shrugged. ‘A count, eh?’ he said, conversationally.
He stepped back until he was by the woman. ‘Care to go and fetch someone?’ he asked quietly.
For the first time, she seemed to realise he was not one of the inn’s servants.
‘Better you than me, I think,’ Swan said kindly.
She crossed her arms over her chest and ran. Swan filled his private copper kettle, no larger than a big mug of beer, with water. He’d had it for two years, and it had survived storms and Turks.
‘I told you to hop it,’ called the tall African. He was very big.
Swan finished drawing water, and poured some of his bucket into the copper kettle. ‘Water, gentles?’ he asked.
‘I told you—’
Swan met the man’s look. The man was mounted, and in half-armour; it was in good repair and he looked competent. So Swan nodded civilly. ‘I sent the girl,’ he said. Some imp within him was preventing him from revealing himself.
‘You’re a cocky bugger,’ the man-at-arms said.
Swan shrugged. ‘I don’t work for you,’ he said. He took his kettle of water, estimating that the woman had had time, and with a very small bow, he passed into the kitchen – having spent the time getting a good look at a French count travelling incognito and his party.
They reeked of money and quality. And it was going ot be hard for the man to pass incognito with the only African man for a thousand miles as his squire.
But he’d missed his moment. The cook – the day cook – was in her kitchen. She shot him one look and froze. ‘My lord?’ she asked, her voice a compromise between anxiety and offence.
Swan gave her his best dazzling smile. ‘I just want water to shave.’ He paused. ‘I’m not really here, if you take my meaning.’
She had not risen to be head cook in a great inn on her rolls of fat alone, and she winked. ‘Helping some poor sinner to get her bread in the oven, eh?’ she asked.
Swan had to work that over in his almost non-existent Austrian German. He settled for merely smiling.
A voice came from behind him. ‘He covered for me in the courtyard – thanks, lad.’
When Swan turned, the woman from the well was standing in a good kirtle and a nice jacket. She front on, she was no girl--a grown woman, a little older than he, tall and dark haired.
‘He’s—’ the cook began.
‘Oh, blessed mother Mary!’ the older woman said. She curtsied.
Swan, in shirt and hose, shook his head. ‘Look, I’m not here, eh? Just heating water to shave. Please don’t make a fuss.’
The cook snapped her fingers and a very young girl – a child – took the kettle and put it on a trivet over some coals in the fireplace. The kitchen was a model of modernity – in addition to the huge fireplace and its double mechanical roasting spit, it had a tile stove with four separate cooking surfaces.
The pretty woman with dark hair was hurriedly settling a linen veil on her hair. Now that Swan had time to examine more – or perhaps less – of her, he settled on her age as perhaps thirty or thirty-five. She smiled. ‘I’m ashamed you saw me in undress,’ she said in good Latin.
Swan laughed, and waved a hand, indicating his brown wool hose and riding boots. ‘I am not a paragon of fashion myself,’ he said. ‘I’m Thomas Swan, of Rome.’
‘Ser Thomas Swan,’ the woman added. Her Latin was good. ‘Gertrude Hunst. My husband keeps the inn.’
She had a directness of manner that Swan found very appealing.
‘Who are these guests?’ Swan asked.
She shook her head. ‘I think I owe you a great deal,’ she said. ‘I was lost in thought and I never saw them. Those men …’
Swan shrugged. The kitchen was filling up, and every servant had to stare at him and have someone else whisper to them of his status. He sighed at his own lack of stealth. ‘I believe they meant no harm. Ma dame, I think I am ruining the work of your lovely kitchen – such a pretty tile stove. I should go back to my room. Would you send a girl with the water?’
She smiled. ‘You have been here before, have you not?’
He nodded, moving closer to her as a boy with a tray passed behind him. ‘I have been at this inn six times in the last few months,’ he admitted. ‘And yet my German is no better.’ He made a motion with his eyes. ‘Unlike your beautiful Latin.’
She smiled again – a bold smile, and Swan thought of his mother. ‘I was going to be a nun, once upon a time,’ she said. Her eyes were very expressive. ‘It didn’t work out.’
Swan laughed outright, and perhaps too loudly. But she said it so well. ‘Beautifully put.’ He bowed and kissed her hand.
She turned her hand over and he kissed the palm.
She wriggled slightly.
Swan saw the cook roll her eyes. He took that as his cue to depart.
Back in the safety of his rooms, Peter was just rising. Swan shut the door. ‘Have you met the innkeeper?’ he asked.
>
Peter laughed. ‘I have, too. Big bastard.’
Swan nodded. He considered various things, and decided that there were risks he was unwilling to take, even for a little delightful casual lechery, and he wondered whether he was getting old.
‘I started my own shaving water,’ he told Peter. ‘If you fetch it, I’ll share.’
Peter nodded at this equitable arrangement and asked no questions.
Swan had thought it possible the lady might bring his water herself …
‘I’m sorry we didn’t have longer together,’ she said as she handed him a cup of wine. He was in his half-armour and mounted on his horse, his company all around him. His armour was too small. The shoulders were no longer comfortable.
Swan looked at her husband, who was twelve feet tall and whose eyes seemed level with Swan’s own, even mounted on a warhorse.
Swan’s fingers lingered on hers. ‘Perhaps next time we could discuss theology,’ he said.
‘I’m better at the recitation of passages,’ she admitted. 'Theology bored me. I prefer doing to talking.' SHe didn't smile, but her solemnity was more exciting than most women's flirtation.
The husband glared. Behind him, at the great double door of the inn, stood the sandy-haired gentleman from the morning, in thigh-high deerskin boots and a fine velvet doublet. He showed no sign of recognising Swan, and Swan had gathered from overheard comments that the man was en route to Vienna.
From France.
‘I will be this way again,’ he said.
‘I look forward to it,’ she said.
Swan turned, waved at his standard-bearers, and rode for Vienna.
‘So there it is, Eminence,’ Swan said to Cardinal Carvajal. ‘I have almost fifty lances for the crusade – if that is your will. You have my master’s documents.’ He had explained everything that he felt it was his business to explain. They were in the older cardinal’s office in the Imperial Palace. It was an elegant room with painted frescoes of the life of St James. The elegance was a trifle tarnished by the floor heaped in sacks – leather sacks.
Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Four Page 2