Peter shook his head in the torchlit semi-darkness. ‘There’s more than one group watching us,’ he said. He motioned to Grazias, who nodded.
‘Peter has the right of it,’ he said. ‘After we killed the first man, we found another body – killed with a mace or a club. Ugly.’ He shrugged, shoulders rolling in his Greek way.
‘A falling out among thieves?’ Swan suggested.
Peter shook his head. ‘Grazias wanted you to see him. But I took a look. He’s French. These other bastards are Imperials. Or Hungarians.’ Peter spat. ‘This is worse than Venice.’
‘You can tell a Frenchman by his clothes?’ the other Dmitri asked.
Peter shrugged, and his eloquent shrug said it all.
It was an easy distinction, even on a corpse. Clothes were different, hairstyles very different. German clothes were longer and more sober, even among the lower classes. Hungarians and Germans might be similar, but not to a Frenchman.
Swan paused. ‘French?’ he asked.
Peter shrugged. ‘Does it make sense to you?’
Swan shook his head. His mind whirled like two cats fighting, but he could not understand why any Frenchman would be involved. Unless they were following him. He thought of the French back at the inn in Graz.
He cursed softly, but it was sheer fatigue and frustration.
‘Crusade,’ he spat, as if it was a malediction.
They were two-thirds of the way to the Medici when men came out of the alleys on either side. The attackers were local, and they had been well briefed.
The first man cut the nearside horse’s throat before Swan was sure they were under attack. The other carthorse landed a kick on the man, and Swan had his sword in his hand.
There were a surprising number of them.
The darkness was almost absolute, and the rain and the fact that almost everyone had their hoods up limited every cue – sight, sound, even touch. Swan had been walking next to the cart’s offside wheel. A man slammed into him without warning while he tried to see what had happened to the horses, and he stumbled – bounced off the wheel, and by pure luck his sword made connected with his nearest opponent.
There was shouting, and the sound of horses’ hooves.
Swan stepped back along the cart. Something cut his hood, and Swan’s blade shot out along the line of the attack. His hand hit the side of the cart even as his sword went home into meat. He almost dropped it.
Swan drew the dagger from his belt and held it out in front of him in the darkness while he nursed his right hand. The man he’d just stabbed was screaming on the ground. Thirty feet away, illuminated by the only lit lamp on the whole street, another man growled orders in Austrian German. He had a flanged steel mace in his hand. Such weapons were so rare that Swan noted it and thought of the corpse. The Frenchman.
‘On me!’ Columbino roared – somewhere in the melee to Swan’s right rear.
Swan had a sense that there were two men in front of him – and neither was Columbino.
He took a blow in the back. It made him stumble, but his mail shirt saved him, although he’d have a bruise there for days. If he lived.
He turned and put his back to the house front – and even that betrayed him. The wall proved to be the house’s door, and was unlatched, and Swan fell backwards, and suddenly there was light. A woman screamed.
Swan scrambled to get to his feet and found a woman clutching a baby to her breast – she was nursing – and she backed away. She screamed, but her eyes held more anger than terror.
Swan couldn’t watch her. A man came through the door, and then another, and the room wasn’t really big enough for four adults.
They had dark hoods, dripping water, and swords. The swords were too long for the room.
Swan’s dagger was not, and he attacked, closing into their space, using his own sword to flip the nearest blade away from the woman, the baby and his own precious hide. He stabbed underhand with the dagger and pricked his opponent through his heavy wool cloak.
The man backed away and fell over a stool.
Swan kicked him ruthlessly, twice, between his legs, put a cross of steel over his head to cover himself from the blow he felt coming, caught the blow on his dagger and turned. He punched with his sword hand, snapping his opponent’s head back, and kept hold of the man’s left hand.
He raised the dagger hand slightly, got it on his enemy’s elbow, and used all the leverage advantages he had to break the man’s arm.
Then, as the man flinched away, Swan stabbed him. The dagger tip scored along his cheekbone – a prominent bone, Slav or Turk – and went home into the man’s eye with a disgusting softness.
The man on the floor clearly wanted to be dead. He’d spewed and worse.
The room was full of the smells of death, and Swan needed to be in the street.
‘I’m sorry,’ Swan said, to the bravo and to the nursing mother. He flicked his sword point into the temple of the man on the ground and pushed hard. The man’s heels drummed the floor.
Swan whirled and pushed through the door.
Even the light of two tallow lamps and a single beeswax candle had ruined whatever sense of the darkness he had had. And now he was silhouetted in the doorway. He turned left.
‘At them! The gold is—’ a voice shouted.
Swan swung his sword’s pommel like an axe, and the thug took it on the temple and dropped.
Two of the stradiotes appeared with torches, and the light and the mounted men combined to break any morale the attackers had left. Swan slapped a man with the flat of his sword – he’d had enough killing.
Until he nearly fell over Peter, lying in the wet street, eyes unblinking.
Peter was breathing. More than that, Swan couldn’t work out.
Swan heard himself order the Greeks to put a horse in the traces where the first horse had died, All the horses were terrified of the smell of their fellow’s blood, and the Greeks – fine horse handlers – had to cut the dead animal free and drag the cart out of the blood.
Swan knocked at the nursing woman’s door. He heard his voice begging.
A man opened the door. He held a crossbow.
‘Please,’ Swan begged. ‘My friend.’
The man frowned. He said something in German, and he was angry.
Swan had Peter in his arms. He bowed his head. In Latin, he said, ‘I work for the Church. The crusade.’
The man leaned out – saw the Greeks, and the English archers.
He sighed. ‘Come.’
It was not the stealthy elegance to which he had aspired, and their arrival at the gate of the Medici was met with derisive catcalls from the gate guard.
Will Kendal was sent forward – as the man whose clothes had taken the least damage. But his Italian wasn’t up to the job, and Swan, who looked like an alley rat, got to exchange north Italian invective with the night guard. Finally, and after they’d made far too much of a fuss, the gate guard allowed that beggars might not own so many horses. He sent for Maestro Bernardo.
The maestro was not pleased to be wakened. His complaints could be heard half a street away, and Swan winced. But at last the great man came down the outside steps of his warehouse.
‘And who are you, my man?’ he asked, buckling a belt over his gown. ‘State your business. This had best be good.’
Swan swung down from his horse. ‘I’m here to save your bank,’ he said simply. ‘And men died to bring you this.’
As soon as Bernardo saw the leather bags, his face changed.
He grabbed Swan’s face between his hands. ‘You are an angel from god,’ he said.
‘I need the best doctor you know,’ Swan said. ‘My friend is wounded. Badly.’
The next few hours passed in a horrible ecstasy of waiting, of frustrating rides through the streets, interrupted by Imperial bureaucrats attempting to ‘investigate’ the incident and demanding bribes. The doctor was found in a brothel, and came eventually. Peter’s breathing by then was like that of a ma
n deeply asleep, and snoring, and blood continued to run out of two stab wounds, one under his arm, one low in his gut.
The doctor watched him for a long time, opened his clothes, stripped the bandages, and looked at the wounds. He shook his head at Swan.
‘I give him twelve hours,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘No artery is cut, or he would already be dead. But the gut will inflame and the bilious humours are already loose in the body cavity. And the lung is touched. Either wound will kill him.’
‘He’s a very tough man,’ Swan said. ‘I’ll pay you to stay with him.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘I like money – but it will not change the outcome.’
Two hours later, Peter died.
Swan wondered at the feeling that enveloped him. It took him time to recognise rage, because he felt it so seldom. Swan was a man who fought when he had to, and seldom troubled to hate his enemies, and suddenly he was enveloped in it. Hate.
He sat in a snug in a German inn with Accudi, carving the table top with his dagger tip. He hadn’t slept.
He was scaring Accudi, he could tell.
‘I want the whore who betrayed us,’ Swan said.
Accudi shrugged. ‘Why? She’s a whore. She sold herself to the highest bidder.’
Swan’s face worked, almost without his volition. ‘I will kill her. Just to start with.’
Accudi looked away. ‘You are not usually a killer of women,’ he said.
His tone – his flat rejection – stung Swan. ‘Don’t you care?’ he said, rising.
Accudi shrugged. ‘Tommaso. We are spies. I liked Peter – but this is what happens to men like us.’ He poured wine for Swan, who had consumed a good deal already. ‘For me, Peter’s death merely reminds me that I will die, not in bed, surrounded by family, but in some shit-soaked alley, surrounded by men of colossal ignorance.’
Swan sat, breathing hard. But listening.
‘The bitch who betrayed you did nothing but … what she does. What we – under other circumstances – might have paid her to do.’ He leaned back, took a long draught of his wine, and met Swan’s eye. ‘I won’t bury you in flowers, Tommaso. If she were one of ours such a betrayal would result in hunting and killing. Yes. But she is not.’ Accudi leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry – but the mistake was yours. You trusted a whore and didn’t cover your tracks.’
Swan looked away. The new, hot rage that flooded him …
Swan had enough training to know that the sick rage was an admission of guilt. ‘Fuck,’ he spat.
Accudi nodded. ‘You have lived a charmed life these last few years,’ he said. ‘I know you loved Peter. But it could have been any time and any foe, and now …’ He sighed. ‘You accomplished your mission.’ He raised his cup. ‘Here’s to Peter and all the other Peters who die so that our masters can do whatever the fuck they do.’
Swan raised his cup, and drank.
‘Bessarion isn’t like the others,’ he said.
Accudi nodded. ‘I agree. Oh, by the living God, my friend, if I did not agree, I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror. But – Bessarion’s goodness does not render Peter less dead, eh?’
Swan poured more wine into his cup, splashing some on the table and some on his hose.
‘Peter and Constantine say there were Frenchmen following us,’ he said.
Accudi nodded. ‘My people tell me that the Sieur de Houdanin has come to Vienna from the King.’ He leaned very close. ‘Houdanin is a very dangerous man indeed.’
Swan tried to take this in, but his head was beginning to react to all the wine and fatigue.
‘He is the King of France’s principal agent in the matter of his son, the Dauphin,’ Accudi said.
Swan stopped himself from pouring more wine. ‘In Rome, we thought that the Dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy were coming on this crusade! The duke sent the Pope a letter—’
‘It is the express policy of the King of France to wreck the crusade,’ Accudi said. ‘Not because he loves the Turk, but because a significant victory for his estranged son would be a defeat for the King.’
‘Christ!’ Swan said. ‘This is even more foolish than the Bohemian heretics hoping that the Turks defeat the crusade.’
‘About on a par with the King of Hungary and the Emperor hoping that Hunyadi is defeated and killed. Yes. I think perhaps we deserve to lose.’ Accudi drank more. ‘I wish I had not said that.’
‘And what is this Frenchman doing here?’ Swan asked.
‘I have no idea. He should be in the Dauphiné, watching his target.’ Accudi paled. ‘Unless the Dauphin is here.’
‘Wouldn’t he have an army?’ Swan asked.
Accudi shook his head. ‘By the wounds of Christ,’ he spat. ‘No one of his rank goes on crusade incognito.’
‘Why would they follow me?’ Swan asked. He shook his head and rose unsteadily. ‘No – fuck it, I can’t think. I need two hours’ sleep. I need to make … arrangements …’ At those words, the floodgates opened.
Suddenly, Accudi was holding him, and he was weeping.
Clemente woke him and dressed him, and with the Stone Barn and Columbino and Will Kendal and another dozen men, they went to the Church of St Nicolas and fetched Peter’s body. They carried it. Even through the fog of anger and fatigue, Swan was deeply pleased to see that the entirety of his company – even the former Malatesta men – came out for the funeral, standing in the St James chapel while the service was read in Latin, and then walking behind the monks to the graveyard. Swan had paid a small fortune to see to it that Peter was buried among Carmelites – in the robe of a Carmelite friar.
Clemente stood, his hunched back more deeply visible than it had been in weeks, his face impassive. Until the first clod of earth was thrown on Peter’s corpse, and then …
Then Clemente exploded, striking Swan hard in the gut and shins, and then Columbino, his puny blows the stronger for weeks in their service. He swore, he shouted against God, and he punched both men hard enough to leave bruises.
With the help of Di Vecchio, they subdued him. Swan apologised to the friars and their abbot. The man bowed, sorrow writ on his face.
‘Send the boy to me,’ he said.
Swan took the boy to the abbot, and the man led him inside his cloisters, still shouting terrible blasphemies.
Di Vecchio shrugged. ‘What can you expect, my lord? He’s a hunchback, and his mother’s a whore.’ He looked at Swan. ‘I’ve known him since he was born.’
Swan was too angry to watch his mouth. ‘My mother’s a whore,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem to hurt me any. And none of you seemed to give a shit about him. Peter, on the other hand …’
Di Vecchio’s hand went to his sword hilt. Then he drew himself up straight. ‘Whatever I say offends you,’ he said wearily.
Swan forced himself to step forward and put a hand on the man’s arm. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I loved Peter. He … made me.’ He looked away. ‘I do not need to offend you simply because I am not pleased with myself.’
Di Vecchio offered him a sad smile. ‘Who made you so wise?’ he said. ‘When I was your age, I just killed anyone who annoyed me.’ He scratched his neck under his shirt collar. ‘Are we going to Belgrade? Truly?’
Swan looked around. The abbot was coming back down the cloister and Clemente was holding his hand, standing a little straighter.
‘We are, if I have to kill every …’ Swan swallowed his anger. ‘By God’s grace,’ he said.
Di Vecchio laughed. It was not the first time Swan had heard the older man laugh. It was, however, the first time he’d liked the sound.
Swan sent Clemente to the Bohemian to tell him what had happened, and then went himself to find an inn where the company might send Peter off in the English fashion, with some drinking. They got directions to a good inn from his own landlord, and made sure they were twice repeated to him on the front steps of his inn, so that the watchers knew exactly where he was going.
Columbino rode at his side. ‘I do
not like your games,’ he said. ‘This is a dirty, dirty business. Worse than anything I have seen in Italy.’
Swan took in a deep breath and counted to ten instead of saying the first things that came to his mind – about the other man’s father’s treason. ‘It is dirty,’ he managed, without choking. ‘But no worse than a papal election.’
He and Columbino rode out to the suburbs to arrange the inn, the dinner and the wine, and back, without any incident. He sent a note to the cardinal, and waited for Accudi, who came in almost an hour behind him.
Accudi was booted and spurred, and he called for wine, and then the two of them went up to Swan’s room. ‘Christ risen, Tommaso, you have more followers than the Pope on Easter Day!’
Accudi had deployed his own people – his own sell-swords and bravos – along Swan’s route – to watch Swan, but really to watch those who followed Swan.
He handed Swan a list. ‘Two teams,’ he said. ‘You and Peter were right – a French team and an Imperial team.’ He drew a finger along the list. ‘The French were very good and very cautious, and the Imperials very bold and more like soldiers or bravos.’
Swan nodded. ‘I saw the man in the floppy hat many times.’
‘That was a foolish hat,’ Accudi agreed. ‘Unless he wanted to be seen.’
Swan rubbed his temples. ‘Do we think the Dauphin is here?’
Accudi shrugged the Italian way. ‘How would I know? I am only a poor old intelligencer. I have asked the cardinal.’ He shrugged. 'In truth, there are so many soi-dissant crusaders camped outside the city that he could be there. By San Giovanni, that would be--irony.'
‘I suppose,’ Swan frowned. ‘I must go out to my armourer. Do you think we can see the body of the Frenchman that Grazias found? Will the civil authorities support us?’
Accudi sighed. ‘They aren’t very efficient, so yes. I will arrange it. I’ll send you a message.’
Swan nodded, rising. ‘But it is this Ergen, or Hergen, who attacked us in the darkness, surely.’
‘Hergen Hauzdaun, the Emperor’s assassin?’ Accudi nodded. ‘It was his team, out there this morning.’ He lowered his voice. ‘How do you know of him?’
Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Four Page 5