Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  ‘All the more reason. A woman; fuck her. If she complains, cut her throat. There’s an end of it. You Italians are so soft.’

  ‘You Spaniards are so fucking stupid it’s a wonder you ever beat the infidel,’ Forteguerri said. ‘She knows things. Those things will linger after she is killed. She has been very clear about this.’

  The Spaniard laughed. ‘She may know things about you, or Borgia, or Sforza,’ he laughed. ‘She knows nothing about me. I say, take her and rack her. She will tell us where this whoreson is.’

  Swan would have liked to stay and listen to more, but he kept moving. Above, conversation stilled; quiet as they were, Forteguerri sensed something, for he said, ‘Silence!’

  Bembo kept moving.

  Forteguerri growled. ‘I heard something.’

  Swan heard his weight shift above and had an adolescent desire to run his dagger through a crack in the floorboards and get the man in the foot. But Bembo tugged at his shoulder and they entered a brick-lined tunnel, black as pitch. It ran downhill at a slight angle, away from the light coming through the floorboards.

  It ended at an iron grate.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Bembo said. ‘I don’t remember this.’

  Behind them, they could hear more footsteps and a shout in Spanish. A loud fist began banging at something; a wall or a panel.

  ‘They’ll find the door,’ Swan said.

  ‘Spaniards? Never,’ Bembo said. ‘In ten minutes one will kill another over a trifle. Besides, these aren’t Spaniards, they’re Aragonese. Like the plague, but more cruel and …’

  The iron grate gave with a loud squeal.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Bembo said, and slipped under it in the darkness. Swan caught the grate, felt the rust under his hands, and had a terrible, tangible moment in which he was under the earth of Rhodes, fighting for his life. In the hole at Mistra.

  ‘Tommaso? Come.’

  Swan was shaking. ‘Fuck,’ he managed, like a man with a fever.

  Bembo came back for him. He shoved the grate open; it squealed like a pig escaping the butcher’s maul, and the fury behind them increased.

  Bembo caught his hand. ‘Come. Come, Tommaso.’

  Swan was shaking like a tree in a tempest. His teeth were chattering. He had a moment …

  … he tried to fight …

  … tried to land a blow …

  The Moor caught his arm, levered it and pulled him off balance, and he took a step. He reached for his dagger …

  ‘Tommaso,’ said Bembo.

  Swan’s hand was on his dagger. There was a little light from somewhere ahead and he was not, apparently, in the tunnels under Rhodes. His breath caught; he was, for a moment, exquisitely and terribly balanced between realities, and then Alessandro resolved as himself and Swan’s questing right hand relaxed and, with an effort of will, he took his hand off the dagger.

  ‘Oh, Sweet Christ,’ he muttered.

  Bembo pulled at him, hard, and the grate slammed shut behind them with a crash of doom.

  ‘Now you need to move quickly,’ Bembo said.

  Swan grunted, and Bembo released the ligatura hold he had on Swan’s left arm. He ran towards the light, and Swan followed, their feet splashing in something modestly foul, and then there were steps. The steps went up.

  ‘This is not the way I came out before,’ Bembo said. ‘I have taken a wrong turn.’

  ‘Not going back now,’ Swan said. He put his shoulder to the next door and pushed, the door opened, and they were inside a house. It was a small house; one room up and one down, very narrow, with an old-fashioned hearth.

  There was one small window at the front, very high up. The house was two hundred years old. Swan grabbed a stool, stood on it, and looked out. He could see a church he knew and a rather grand block of residences from which he’d once climbed down.

  ‘Rooftops?’ he asked.

  Bembo smiled. ‘Better than sewers, I’m thinking,’ he said.

  They went up; up and up, right out onto the roof. But they were on the right side of the narrow street, and after one incautious leap from a balcony to another balcony, they were in the long block, moving from chimney to chimney. Both men paused and slung their sword belts to make climbing easier; then they raced along the red roof tiles, most of them old and solid underfoot, corrupted with fungus and moss like old bodies corrupted with sin, but steady enough.

  ‘I wish we had a bow,’ Swan said.

  ‘Why?’ Bembo asked, panting. ‘They don’t even know we’re here. Why shoot them?’

  ‘You’re the one who wanted blood, remember? Where are we going?’ Swan asked.

  ‘I thought you knew?’ Bembo said.

  They paused in a forest of roof-trees and chimney pots.

  ‘No water here, but otherwise a fine place to wait for a day,’ Swan said. They were in a pocket where four steep roofs converged on a central fireplace system with four chimneys, so that the result was a sort of red-tiled, elevated patio a hundred feet in the air. The converging roof-trees were like garden walls shielding them from prying eyes.

  ‘A bad trap if they came at us over the roofs,’ Bembo said. ‘And no water all day?’ He shrugged.

  Swan agreed. ‘We could go to Lucrezia’s.’

  ‘Saint Mark and Saint George, English. You mean your overdeveloped sense of chivalry includes a madame who probably sold you to the Pope?’

  Swan thought about it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Forteguerri’s going for her.’

  ‘Forteguerri … is he being used or using the Aragonese, do you think?’ Bembo asked. His breathing was returning to normal.

  Swan sat back against the roof-tree. ‘You know what I learned a long time ago as a spy?’ he asked. ‘I learned that there are no masterful plots. People make this shit up as they go. We’re onto a very old plot with a lot of frayed ends. Lucrezia is playing for her own; Forteguerri is playing for his own. They no doubt change their minds.’

  Bembo managed a smile. ‘So. You now know everything. This is the great secret of our art; everything changes always.’

  ‘So we descend on Lucrezia ahead of the Aragonese. And we take her …’ Swan smiled. ‘Christ, I have it.’

  Bembo shook his head. ‘All we have to do is stay alive for twenty hours and we win. Despite which, you will take an insane risk for a woman you mostly despise.’

  Swan shrugged.

  Bembo shrugged back. ‘Naturally, I’m coming.’

  Donna Lucrezia was collecting her papers when a window broke and one of her girls screamed. She stepped out into the hallway and found Alessandro di Bracchio with his sword-point at her throat.

  Swan was leaning over the third-floor banister, where the girls lived. Of course, he knew that; he’d virtually lived with Violetta.

  ‘Run!’ Swan bellowed. ‘Out the back, all of you, and run for your fucking lives. Now!’ He grabbed a young woman by the wrist. ‘I need you to go to the house of David Ben Abraham. Take this note. Understand? Here’s five ducats. Go.’

  A torrent of young women began to move down the stairs, like a living waterfall of flesh. It was noon; they were all clothed, most of them in dull, workaday colours; Donna Lucrezia required her girls to clean and carry and even do sewing and weaving.

  ‘Run!’ Swan bellowed. ‘And stay clear of the Spaniards.’

  Donna Lucrezia met Di Bracchio’s eyes. ‘You would kill me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘With some pleasure,’ Di Bracchio admitted. ‘And some pain. I have had many good times here.’

  ‘Time to go,’ Swan yelled, and he dropped from the third-floor landing to the second, landing neatly and without falling over his sword.

  ‘I didn’t betray you,’ Lucrezia said to Swan, a little desperate.

  Swan nodded. ‘Never said you did,’ he said. ‘Out the back, now.’

  Swan had once come in with a framed picture. He went out the same way, through the kitchen and the servants’ entrance. In the servants’ entrance, Swan took a big overgown, a coarse wool garment that th
e cook probably wore, and threw it to Donna Lucrezia. ‘Put this on and cover your hair,’ he said.

  ‘So that you can murder me quietly?’ Lucrezia asked. She was calm.

  Swan looked her in the eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My word on it. Now move.’

  ‘My girls will be caught …’

  Di Bracchio smiled his nasty smile. ‘A few will,’ he admitted. ‘And the bevy of them bursting from cover will take up a great deal of time.’

  ‘Di Bracchio, you are a worthless, gutless bastard.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Bembo now,’ he said. ‘Otherwise correct. Last chance, Donna; put on the gown or …’

  ‘Or what?’ she said.

  Swan clipped her on the back of the head with his sword hilt and she went down.

  ‘I told you that would be easier,’ Bembo said.

  ‘I hate hitting women,’ Swan admitted.

  They wrapped her in the gown and carried her through the door. Outside there was a big mule, the kind a cook would use to fetch provender from market. Swan put her over the mule and together they made their way to the house of the physician of the Bishop of Ostia, Maestro Claudio. Swan had not been to see the man in two years; he went in through the servants’ entrance, and unbundled Donna Lucrezia, who lay inert, panting badly and with clammy skin.

  Claudio barely looked at the two men. ‘I know this woman,’ he said.

  ‘Good to see you, too,’ Swan said.

  ‘Surely, in all your life of violence, someone has taught you to knock a person unconscious better than this,’ Claudio said. ‘Far too hard; far too high on the skull.’ He pressed with his thumb and Lucrezia moaned. ‘In fact, I’d say you didn’t want to do it, had to work yourself up, and then overreacted.’

  ‘Thanks, Maestro, and such a pleasure to see you again,’ Swan said.

  ‘She’ll have you both killed,’ Claudio said.

  ‘No,’ Swan replied. ‘We just saved her life and probably saved her from some very aggressive Spanish torture.’

  Claudio met Swan’s eye. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘We could explain,’ Bembo said.

  ‘I thought you lived in Venice, now, in a palace,’ Claudio said.

  ‘I do. I did. I made the mistake of following Swan …’

  ‘An easy mistake to make. Please do not explain. I do not want to know anything.’ Claudio nodded. ‘I will take care of her. The bishop can protect me.’

  ‘My thought exactly,’ said Swan. ‘Can the bishop provide us with some plain brown robes?’

  The two Augustan friars walked up the road to San Silvestro, and were stopped by the porter.

  ‘I don’t know you, brothers,’ he said.

  ‘We’re from Ireland,’ Swan said.

  The man shook his head but admitted them, sending a boy ahead to the abbot. Hibernia was so far away as to seem incredible, yet creditable.

  Swan crossed the church’s paved courtyard following the novice and walked carefully up the wooden steps to the refectory, lest his booted feet fail to sound like sandals. At the top, he pushed open the door to the apartment reserved for the abbot.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Di Monserrat.

  Swan walked in and Bembo followed him. They both bowed, rather unlike friars.

  ‘Messire Abbot,’ Swan said. ‘I need to be hidden and fed for twelve hours. In exchange, I can absolutely promise you that Messire Spinelli’s holdings will be granted you in full.’

  Di Monserrat smiled a fairly worldly smile. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I am gathering that you are the two men for whom the Pope, his guard and Messire Forteguerri are searching Rome.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But on the other hand, if we were to fall into the Pope’s hands, Messire Antonelli would still not give you the reversion of Spinelli’s lands. Ever.’

  Di Monserrat sat back. ‘I will go to confession for this,’ he said. ‘But I will tell you that my loathing for Antonelli is such that I’m unlikely to do anything to help him hold on to power. But I am human enough, and my order is poor enough, that I wonder why Messire Antonelli would never, as you put it, give us the reversion of an estate we were legally granted.’

  Swan bowed. ‘Abbot, once I tell you, you will be on a shortlist of men the Pope will order killed to protect the secret.’

  Di Monserrat crossed himself and prayed for a moment. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Antonelli believes that the old Pope’s fortune is buried on Spinelli’s estate. About three hundred thousand ducats. Forteguerri believes the same.’ He and the aristocratic abbot locked eyes.

  Monserrat’s eyebrows went up. ‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Now I understand everything.’

  Swan looked surprised. ‘You do?’

  ‘Too many things,’ Monserrat said. ‘We will hide you. I am no supporter of Calixtus III or Antonelli. And I doubt anyone could find anything is this ancient pile of stone.’

  He was still fingering his short beard and considering when there was a knock at the door. Bembo put his hand to his sword and Swan stepped behind one of the window curtains.

  The young novice called out, ‘There’s another Irish monk.’ He sounded personally aggrieved.

  Swan smiled at Bembo. ‘Padraig,’ he said. ‘So Clemente is safe, and all is well.’

  Bembo shook his head. ‘Naming calls,’ he said. ‘You draw down curses with this arrogance.’

  Padraig opened his bundles. Inside he had two complete outfits; small round beaver hats, long kaftans. He gave Swan a short letter, which Swan kissed when he read it, and Bembo a note, which he also kissed, after a curious look at Swan.

  Swan sent Padraig back with instructions for Master Kendal. Bembo added instructions for Clemente.

  Swan looked Padraig in the eye, both hands on the Irishman’s shoulders. ‘Tell Giannis, “Go.”’

  ‘Go,’ Padraig said.

  He grinned and left them.

  Neither man slept very well, in the belfry of the church of San Silvestro.

  The next morning, as the bells of all the major churches began to ring for the seventh hour, Jacob, the papal chamberlain, purchased a sausage in a bread roll from his favourite baker just by the Forum. Then he looked for a while at a protrusion of what had once been Trajan’s Column and walked off through the ancient centre of the empire, whistling an air from the motet of the mass he’d heard the day before.

  At a turning in the ancient road, he met a man all in green, who put a dagger to his throat.

  ‘Don’t make trouble, Master Jacob,’ Kendal said.

  Two hours later, messengers reached the Orsini Palace, the Colonna Palace, Bessarion’s palazzo and the palace of Aeneas Picclomini, all bearing commands from the Holy Father to attend him instantly on a matter of the first importance. All three men took men-at-arms; more than a dozen, in each case. The cardinal deacon’s were commanded by his nephew, Colonna Secunda. Cardinal Picclomini’s guards were commanded by Forteguerri. Cardinal Orsini’s guards were commanded by his natural son, usually called Orsini Primo, formerly papal Gonfaloniere, a valuable office recently passed to an Aragonese captain. Bessarion brought six guards, all Greeks, commanded by Giannis Trapezetoi.

  But a few minutes before this wave of horseflesh and steel fell on the Castel San’Angelo, the Princess Caterina Zaccaria rode through the gates, swathed in veils, followed by her own guard, twenty stradiotes, and attended by her dark-skinned Algerian page. She had a pass sealed with the Pope’s own personal seal, and the Aragonese swordsman on duty admitted her entourage with many a long glance at the stradiotes, who looked too much like Grenadine jinetes to make any Spaniard comfortable. The tall bastard who commanded her guard winked with an insolent green eye as he passed the Aragonese captain, who glared in return.

  They went up the ramp, which curved gradually, and the princess pulled her veils back and uttered a curt command. The guard of stradiotes halted. Most of them turned their horses or dismounted.

  Six of them went on with the princess. One of them was
very fat, and sweating profusely. They rode to the inner courtyard and dismounted, and a small stradiote who made a great effort to stand straight took the horses and bowed deeply to the princess, who swept by him, swathed in a fortune’s worth of red velvet.

  Her long riding gown, as magnificent as only the Greek East could afford, matched the red of the Red Chamber almost perfectly. Her guards swept in with her; a Aragonese man-at-arms slammed his visor closed and called out in Spanish, and was too slow to avoid being thrown over a stradiote’s hip and pinned to the floor. A dagger was put to his visor.

  The princess continued down the corridor. She stopped outside the private entrance to the papal chamber.

  She pointed at the short, fat stradiote, who was now revealed as the papal chamberlain. ‘Antonelli,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  Jacob, terrified, leaned out into the corridor. ‘Messire Antonelli?’ he called out.

  Jacob felt the prick of a dagger against his neck and hot breath on his face. ‘Messire Antonelli?’

  ‘So you are not lost to the heathen after all, eh, Jacob?’ Antonelli called back. ‘I am busy saving Rome from the barbarians.’

  A chair creaked.

  ‘The Holy Father needs you,’ Jacob said, his voice trembling.

  Antonelli rose. ‘Why?’

  ‘The Princess Zaccaria demands it,’ Jacob said.

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ Antonelli said, and came out into the corridor. Immediately a sword was put across his throat.

  ‘Surprise,’ Tom Swan said.

  The cardinals arrived to find the gates held by stradiotes. It was an odd occurrence, although Bessarion, who arrived first, was quick enough to make a joke in Greek that made all the men on the gate laugh.

  He looked back at his captain, who gave a very Hellenic shrug.

  ‘It is as you see it,’ Giannis said.

  ‘What have they done?’ Bessarion asked.

  ‘What needed to be done, Eminence,’ Giannis answered.

  There was blood on the paving stones, and blood again at the first small courtyard, and the horses rolled their eyes and started. Bessarion went into the entry hall and through the room where Swan had first heard of Spinelli, with the cupids on the fireplace. In a few minutes, he was joined by Cardinal Orsini, Cardinal Colonna and Cardinal Picclomini. The room was full of armed men.