Tom Swan and the Last Spartans - Part Five

by Christian Cameron

  The papal chamberlain, white as a day-old corpse, came in and bowed low. ‘My lords, Your Eminences; please follow me.’

  ‘Why are there no Spaniards on the gates?’ Forteguerri asked.

  ‘All of your questions will be answered,’ Jacob said. He turned and led the way into the papal audience chamber, where Swan, not so long before, had knelt to tell the Pope of the victory at Belgrade.

  The Pope sat on his throne, silent.

  Messire Antonelli stood nearby, also silent. A tall man in green wool stood close to him. Forteguerri started. He turned, and found that one of his men-at-arms had his dagger at Forteguerri’s unarmoured crotch.

  ‘Go in,’ Cesare di Brescia said pleasantly.

  ‘You fucking traitor,’ Forteguerri said.

  ‘This, from you?’ Cesare asked. He winked at Swan, who stood close to the Pope.

  Colonna didn’t wink. He sat, and stretched his legs. ‘Messire Suane, no protection offered by Venice can survive what you have done here.’

  Swan glanced at the Pope, who was clearly livid with rage.

  ‘Eminence, we are about to have a brief trial. You and your brothers of the college will try Messire Antonelli for the crime of treason to the Pope and the Christian community. If you find him to be innocent, I may then fear your retribution.’

  Alessandro Bembo, no longer dressed as a stradiote, stepped forward. ‘The Pope has been duped by this man,’ he said in a resonant voice.

  Bessarion rolled his eyes.

  Orsini smiled. The smile never reached his eyes, but his lips said, ‘Ahh.’

  Colonna sank a little deeper in his chair. ‘That’s as well. Bembo, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Eminence.’

  ‘A little more courteous than in my house, eh, messire?’ Cardinal Colonna said.

  ‘I regret my discourtesy,’ Bembo said smoothly.

  ‘Well; I’m a difficult old man.’ Colonna looked at the other three cardinals and the Holy Father. ‘Just kill him, Swan. We don’t need a trial. We all know what it’s about.’

  Picclomini leaned forward. He had watched Forteguerri held at dagger point with interest, as if he’d never seen an open display of violence before. Now he looked back.

  ‘By no means,’ Picclomini said. ‘Let us have a trial.’

  ‘You are absurd,’ Antonelli said. ‘You are not lawyers and I am. You cannot try me.’

  ‘Surprise,’ Bembo said. ‘We can. Because we have the swords.’

  ‘You cannot have taken the whole castle,’ said the Pope, his first words. His lips were almost white with anger.

  There was a short silence.

  Swan bowed. ‘Holy Father, I took the liberty of removing the vermin I found in your palace. Bad men, who have committed many crimes against the population. When we are done here, I will give them to the captains of Orsini and Colonna for trial.’

  ‘Trial, trial,’ spat Antonelli. ‘You have no evidence.’

  ‘Do we not?’ Bembo said. ‘First, I have Loredan.’

  The Venetian ambassador stepped into the room. He still smelled a little stale, but he was decently dressed. Grazias had released him as soon as the castello had been in their hands.

  Antonelli shrugged. ‘So? He is a dangerous man, an impostor. The Holy Father ordered his arrest.’

  Pope Calixtus looked as if he’d been made to swallow bitter medicine.

  ‘The Holy Father is not on trial here,’ Loredan said very quietly. ‘And you ordered my arrest. You forget that I was there.’

  Antonelli looked, if anything, relieved. ‘This is a simple misunderstanding. I was told that this man was an impostor …’

  ‘I assure you that he is not,’ Bembo said.

  ‘I had nothing to do with his arrest,’ the Holy Father said.

  Antonelli felt the knife go in. That is, he knew in that moment that the Pope had abandoned him.

  ‘Holy Father, there are a great many things I might say,’ Antonelli began, but Swan silenced him with a rude gesture.

  ‘Tell us about the five hundred thousand ducats, Messire Antonelli.’ Swan was aping the manner of many advocates he had known. He should have given this role to Cesare; the man really was a lawyer.

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ Antonelli said.

  Swan gestured, and the Other Demetrios brought in a veiled woman. When her veil was removed, every man present saw that it was Donna Lucrezia.

  ‘You told me that you would find five hundred thousand ducats,’ she said clearly.

  ‘You bitch,’ Antonelli spat. ‘You all know who this is? The very whore of Babylon. Perhaps you all lie with her together …’ It occurred to Antonelli that, however great his contempt for the college of cardinals, this was not the place for it. ‘She would say anything for money.’

  ‘I loaned you money, you viper,’ she said. ‘You threatened me. You offered me money.’

  Antonelli shrugged.

  Swan motioned and Clemente came and brought a chair, exactly like the chairs the Orsini and Colonna had, and seated Donna Lucrezia in it.

  Swan walked across the floor. ‘Perhaps you think we do not know everything. Let me explain. Once upon a time, Pope Eugenius put away a store of gold for the papacy against future need. It was a large amount of gold; large enough that banks could borrow against it. In effect, the papacy could be a bank. That was twenty years ago; times change. People change. People die. And finally, the only man who knew what there was to be known about the money was …’

  Forteguerri spat, ‘Spinelli! I knew you were after the money, Swan!’

  Swan smiled. ‘Landi Gianetti,’ Swan said to Forteguerri. ‘If you hadn’t killed Pepin the carter, you’d know all about it. Lucrezia knew, and apparently she never told you.’ He smiled at Lucrezia like a boy at his first lover.

  She looked at the floor.

  Swan motioned to Antonelli. ‘But even as the players in the secret papal bank died, or were poisoned – or pushed; that’s not my story, gentles – another Pope needed money for a crusade. An insane amount of money. Tens of thousands of ducats a month, every month. For a while, the Pope’s banker was able to write loans. Then he simply folded his bank and declared himself unable to raise further capital.’

  ‘You lying man-whore,’ Antonelli said. ‘You are in league with Spinelli to defraud my master, Cosimo di Medici.’

  ‘Goodness, shall I fall on the floor in awe of that name?’ Swan said. He held up a scroll. ‘Shall I read a letter for him? Antonelli, you financed months of war by taking papal tithes directly, instead of leaving them in situ.’ Swan looked around. Bessarion understood him, and Picclomini. ‘Eminences, I beg your indulgence. Usually, when England pays its papal tithe, the money stays in a vault in London. The Holy Father gets a piece of paper that allows him to do business in Rome at a very slight discount; the next time the Ricardi of Lucca want to buy English wool, they simply buy the Pope’s paper money in Rome and turn it into gold in London. So the gold, which Englishmen paid to the Pope, buys Luccan weavers a lot of English wool. Everyone understand?’

  Antonelli, for the first time, showed signs of discomfort.

  ‘Messire Antonelli realised that he could take the paper and then send agents to take the gold in person. It would gradually undercut the whole economic system of Europe, but in the short run, he’d have the money for the crusade.’

  Antonelli drew himself up. ‘I was ordered by the Holy Father,’ he said. ‘And I never did any such thing against an Italian bank. Foreign banks, perhaps; there is no law. Indeed, the King of England did as much to us in the last century.’

  Swan smiled, and it was as bleak as a hangman’s knot. ‘You stole money from your own maestro, Cosimo di Medici.’

  For the first time, men looked interested. Lucrezia put a hand to her beautiful neck. Forteguerri edged slightly away from Cesare.

  ‘You can never prove that,’ Antonelli said.

  ‘I can,’ said a clear voice. The Princess Zaccaria, scion of one of F
lorence’s oldest families, came in from the papal apartment. ‘I have an order in your own hand. You gave it …’

  ‘Who is this?’ asked Cardinal Picclomini.

  Swan bowed. ‘The Princess of Achaea, Eminence.’

  ‘Ah.’ Aeneas Picclomini nodded. ‘I think we met when you were a child.’

  The princess inclined her head graciously.

  Antonelli’s guilt was written on him.

  ‘You ordered men killed. You took all the money from our coffers …’

  ‘Gracious God!’ shouted Antonelli. ‘The Holy Father ordered it!’

  Silence greeted his admission.

  ‘I did not,’ said the Pope.

  Swan bowed to the princess. ‘You took the gold from twenty places; you took the gold that might have been used to build alliances and hire soldiers, all to pay for a fleet you had built with the most incredible corruption, all in hopes that your agents would find the old Pope’s treasure and you could put it all back before you were caught.’

  ‘He ordered it!’ shouted Antonelli.

  Picclomini turned and looked at Forteguerri.

  Colonna smiled.

  Orsini frowned.

  Bessarion looked at his hands.

  ‘I say you did it yourself,’ Swan said. ‘And I say you have just admitted it.’

  The Pope was now as white as his chamberlain.

  ‘But,’ Antonelli said, weakly, ‘if you know that I took the money, surely you know …’

  The princess made a deep reverentia to the Pope. ‘I believe we are done with this bad servant?’ she said.

  Loredan inclined his head. ‘I know where there is an empty cell.’

  Kendal took Antonelli’s arm and Forteguerri moved. He drew his dagger and put it into Di Brescia’s arm and drew a sword from one of his men-at-arms; a desperate move, flawlessly executed.

  Men sprang to cover their principals, and swords grew like blades of grass in the spring, and Swan moved, too late, to protect the Pope, but it was not the Pope that Forteguerri went for, but the princess. ‘Everyone stay where you are,’ Forteguerri said. ‘I wonder who among you wants this woman to die?’

  He had a dagger at her throat, and his sword emerged from behind her.

  Swan looked at her, and their eyes met.

  ‘If you come any closer …’ Forteguerri said.

  The princess turned, her neck passing inside the circle of his arm because he didn’t have a hand to hold her, and she dropped to the floor, slipping through his arms. Swan passed forward, and Forteguerri’s sword rang on Swan’s. He tried to bind off the cut, but Swan passed to the left and Forteguerri had to retreat or have his face opened by Swan’s rising montante.

  Swan went forward again, getting a leg over the princess. She rolled like an acrobat and Bembo grabbed her outflung arm with his good one and dragged her clear on the smooth marble floor.

  Forteguerri threw a flat cut at Swan’s head and Swan parried, a little too close, a little late in the tempo; his own sword cut his head. He rifled a counter-cut and again Forteguerri stepped back.

  Swan threw a small thrust at Forteguerri’s hand and made the man change guards.

  No one was moving to help Forteguerri. Grazias and Clemente, an unlikely pair, were closing in on Forteguerri’s back.

  Forteguerri knew, too. He pushed forward, cutting again, the same cut at Swan’s head, high and flat.

  This time, Swan passed his right foot back behind his left; his sword went through a half-circle, low to high, so that he crossed his adversary from the inside, and in the same tempo he passed forward again, his right leg powering him as Vadi had taught him, and Forteguerri’s desperate parry served only to push Swan’s thrust into his own shoulder. Swan stepped offline; Forteguerri screamed; Clemente took Forteguerri’s sword out of his spasming hand as the man fell off Swan’s blade.

  Padraig stood in front of the princess, a heavy knife in his hand. Grazias and Umar had Antonelli between them. The Other Demetrios had pressed Loredan to the wall; the Venetian was unarmed, and the veteran stradiote protected him.

  Swan drew his arm back to finish Forteguerri and Bembo caught his wrist neatly, as Cardinal Picclomini stepped between them. The small cardinal was afraid; yet curiously bold.

  ‘I want him,’ Picclomini said. ‘He is a black sheep, but he is mine.’

  Orsini Primo was pushing his cardinal out the door, and Colonna Uno stood in a corner behind a fence of swords. Secundo waited for a moment, and the only sound was the sound of thirty armed men breathing very fast.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Jacob said. ‘Put up, gentlemen. The Holy Father, gentlemen.’

  Swan bowed to Colonna Secundo. He was trying hard not to kill Forteguerri. ‘Would you do me the great favour of guarding the Holy Father?’ Swan asked. ‘All of the stradiotes are about to leave the castello.’

  Secundo saluted with his sword and sheathed it. Cardinal Colonna stepped forward.

  ‘So close to Armageddon,’ he said.

  Bessarion emerged from a hedge of stradiote blades. The Pope, on his chamberlain’s arm, rose from his throne, and everyone bowed deeply.

  Swan was breathing normally.

  Bessarion stepped forward. ‘There are still Aragonese all through the city,’ he said.

  ‘The Orsini and the Colonna will clear them away,’ Bembo said with a look at Orsini Primo.

  ‘In perfect amity,’ Cardinal Orsini said. ‘Perhaps my nephew might be announced as Gonfaloniere?’

  The Pope inclined his head, and it was done. He turned, and went into his apartment.

  The Orsini and the Colonna went out, all together, as if they were friends.

  Picclomini nodded to Swan. ‘You were with Trevisan?’ he said.

  Swan had forgotten. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I was.’

  ‘Tell us!’ Picclomini demanded.

  ‘A great victory,’ Swan said. ‘The Turkish fleet is destroyed at Mytilene.’

  Picclomini crossed himself. The Pope came back to his door.

  ‘A victory?’ he asked, his voice rasping.

  ‘Yes, Holy Father,’ Swan said, on one knee. Useless and transitory. A victory.

  ‘And my fleet?’ the Pope asked, like a parched man asking for water.

  ‘Intact,’ Swan said. Full of Tenedos worm; rotting at its moorings.

  ‘Now God be praised,’ the Pope said. He glanced at Jacob. ‘See this man is suitably rewarded,’ the old man said, as if he could not remember that Swan had been the messenger from Belgrade, or that he had just layered accusation on accusation in that very chamber. He turned away with another benison and passed through the heavy oak door.

  Loredan was laughing. It was a bitter laughter. ‘Oh, Alessandro,’ he said. ‘They came for me because there was a rumour that Trevisan lost. Such a pack of fools.’

  ‘And I am to understand that the Princess Zaccaria is to lie under my roof?’ Bessarion asked. His hands were steepled; they all sat in a circle around his great writing table; Loredan, Bembo, Swan, Clemente, Umar, Grazias, Giannis, even Antoine. The princess sat very quietly.

  ‘As to that,’ Swan said, and Bembo laughed aloud.

  ‘Now we hear it,’ Bembo said.

  The princess blushed.

  ‘Eminence, this is not the Princess Zaccaria, who is, God willing, in her castle at Glarenza.’ Swan glanced at her, and she blushed again. ‘This is my intended wife, Sophia Accaiaoulo. She happens to bear a strong resemblance to the princess; not that it mattered, as no one knew her but Picclomini.’

  Bessarion uttered the first low whistle they had ever heard from his lips. ‘So in fact, you defrauded four cardinals,’ Bessarion said.

  Swan smiled. ‘Eminence, I needed to get into the castello, and I needed to send a jolt of fear through their conspiracy; the way a shout can freeze an inferior swordsman in place.’

  ‘So you risked an innocent young woman …’ Bessarion said.

  ‘I wanted to,’ Sophia said. ‘In fact, it was part of our marriage contra
ct. Did I act my part well?’

  ‘You were brilliant when you slipped Forteguerri,’ Bembo said. ‘You can be all the heroines in my adventures.’

  Bessarion nodded to himself. ‘You were very careful with the Holy Father,’ he said.

  The Greeks present all looked away.

  Bembo nodded. ‘There was nothing to be gained …’ he began.

  Bessarion rose to his feet. ‘Ser Tommaso, I believe you are to be congratulated; a masterful plan. Far too complicated; I suspect that you could have ridden into the castello as the messenger of victory and ended the whole matter …’

  Bembo looked at Swan, who was suddenly frozen.

  ‘Or perhaps just arranged to have Di Medici murder Antonelli as he walked to the castello one day,’ Bessarion said. He shrugged. ‘But you do like an elaborate plan. I thank you all. Because of you, all the corruption and decay that is Rome can rumble on for a few more days. Perhaps we are just Constantinople, again.’

  Grazias crossed himself.

  ‘But I believe I spoke to you strongly once before about bringing a woman into my house,’ Bessarion said to Swan, and such was Swan’s mood that for a moment he thought the great prelate was threatening him, until he saw the smile behind the beard.

  ‘I sentence you to marriage, Ser Tommaso. Immediate marriage, or I throw you into the street.’

  And so, an hour later, in Bessarion’s chapel, Sophia Di Accaiaoulo was married to Tom Swan, knight of St Mark; Lord Loredan of Venice gave her away, and Lord Bembo acted as Swan’s father, and Antoine prepared, at no notice, an heroic feast.

  They drank, and danced; it proved that, despite the admonitions of the cardinal, a surprising number of Lucrezia’s wards had been gathered by the stradiotes; musicians were found, because it was Rome; wine flowed, and lies were told, and the week’s quiet battles refought; Clemente was toasted, and colour began to return to Loredan’s face.

  And later, Sophia stood, mostly undressed, by Swan’s narrow bed under the eaves.

  She was laughing.

  So was Swan.

  ‘It won’t always be like this,’ he said, suddenly.