Venice

by Christian Cameron

  ‘I am Balthazar,’ said the little man. ‘I arrange loans.’ He raised his hands. ‘My apologies. Rabbi Aaron said I must approach you directly. I have a . . . package. For Constantinople.’ He smiled thinly. ‘And I believe Rabbi Aaron passed on my . . . warning.’

  Swan shook his head. ‘I don’t have a ship or an itinerary,’ he said. He returned the man’s bow with a deeper bow. ‘But I appreciate the warning, messire.’

  He paused. Balthazar smiled. ‘Pardon me, but you do have a ship. You will leave on the Venetian state galley Nike, at the end of next week. The papal ambassador will be the Bishop of Ostia.’ The man smiled shyly. ‘I collect such useless facts,’ he said, turning his head aside, as if ashamed.

  But Swan stopped dead. ‘How do you know that?’

  The man smiled slyly. ‘I have friends. Clients. Men who need a favour or a loan.’ He extended a hand.

  Swan took it. ‘If you are correct, than I will do your favour.’

  Balthazar smiled and bowed. ‘I have something you might like. To trade.’ He nodded. ‘I have heard you are a man of blood.’

  Swan laughed, and two grandmothers across the street glared at him.

  After he was done with Rabbi Aaron, one of the rabbi’s sons walked him to the pawnbroker’s. Balthazar greeted him and served him wine, and two servants brought in a wicker basket.

  Swan wondered how important the package was, that this man with a house full of servants and a silver candlestick on every table should have come to meet him in person.

  ‘A man left this with me,’ Balthazar said. ‘He won’t ever be coming back.’

  The wicker basket proved to hold a fine breast and backplate, a matching helmet – an armet in the new style – with plate arms and beautiful Milanese gauntlets.

  ‘It is very fine,’ said Swan, aware he was being bribed.

  ‘Try it on,’ said the Jew.

  ‘I’d need an arming doublet,’ Swan said, but it was a quibble.

  When he left England to be a soldier, he’d had a breastplate, an old chain shirt that had belonged to Uncle Dick, and a pair of mitten gauntlets from a bygone age with a new sallet from Germany that his father had provided, albeit unwittingly. The French looters had all that.

  Every item in the basket was better than any of the items he’d owned in England. There were marks on the gauntlets – they’d been worn. One deep dent atop the left pauldron. Not a mark on the breastplate.

  ‘But armour has to fit,’ he said.

  The Jew steepled his hands – he looked exactly like Cardinal Bessarion for a moment. ‘So I understand,’ he said.

  The arms were heavier than he had imagined and wearing them felt odd. The breast and backplate were too tight. It took one of Balthazar’s sons and both his daughters to get the breast and back closed on his waist.

  On the other hand, once it was on, it felt fine.

  The gauntlets were very fine. The helmet and attached gorget went on well, but helmets tended to fit from man to man.

  Balthazar’s daughter Sarah clapped her hands. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘A knight!’

  Balthazar glared at her, and she pulled her veil over her face and vanished up the stairs.

  ‘If there was somewhere to lace the arms,’ his son said. ‘I’ve seen it done,’ he went on. ‘I love to watch them arm the knights for jousting.’

  Swan laughed. ‘If I ever joust, I’ll call for you,’ he said.

  After he had it all off, he said, ‘That’s worth a fortune. What do you want me to carry?’

  The Jew nodded. ‘Not to me, it isn’t. I want you to carry two letters, and a single packet, which I will provide on the day you sail. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘The Rabbi Aaron knows of this?’ Swan asked.

  ‘No,’ Balthazar said. ‘This is between us.’

  ‘And I get the armour?’ Swan asked.

  ‘No,’ Balthazar said. ‘You get the armour regardless. I mean what I say, Englishman. It is useless to us here, and no Jew should have taken it in pawn. But I’m pleased it fits you. What you get from me is contact with my friends in the Golden Horn. The rabbi says you are a good student and a good friend to the Jews. Jews need friends.’

  Swan sipped the wine, which was splendid. ‘And if I cut open your package and sell the contents?’ he said.

  Balthazar made a face. ‘No Jew in the world will ever do business with you,’ he said. He laughed. ‘Eh – listen to me! What a lie. There’s always a Jew to eat another Jew. But no Jew in Venice will do business with you. And – it wouldn’t do you any good.’ He laughed. ‘And don’t you have enough enemies?’

  Swan nodded. ‘I will need to ship some things out of Constantinople,’ he said.

  Balthazar nodded.

  ‘I think I would like very much to be your friend,’ Swan said. ‘If only for your magnificent present and your splendid wine, and your very pretty daughter, I would value you.’

  ‘Our family was exiled from England two hundred years ago, after our women were humiliated in public, the men beaten, and all our property seized,’ Balthazar said. ‘Why are you . . . a friend? Of Jews?’

  Swan shrugged. ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

  Balthazar shrugged back. ‘Perhaps for the best.’

  At the door, Balthazar’s son Solomon stopped him. ‘What would you charge to teach me to fence?’ he asked.

  Swan had some idea that this might be illegal. But so was gambling. And prostitution. And smuggling.

  ‘Do you have a pair of swords? Safed swords?’ Swan asked.

  Solomon shook his head.

  ‘We’d need a pair. They would have to be kept somewhere, yes? Illegal for you to own, I think?’ He looked around. ‘Or for me to bring to the ghetto.’

  Solomon put a hand on his shoulder. ‘But you . . . would.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Yes. I’m not that good – I’m taking lessons myself.’

  Solomon smiled. They were the same age. Solomon looked so different he might have been an alien – different clothes, different face, different manner. But there was something – a piratical gleam – that made Swan take to him instantly.

  ‘We need a place – somewhere we can both get to. With the equipment, and no nosy neighbours.’

  ‘In Venice?’ Solomon shook his head. ‘Let me see. It is a foolish thing. I have always wanted to do this. I saw you – you aren’t like my father’s bravos.’ He shrugged. ‘And the rabbi said you were a good man, for a Christian.’

  Swan bowed deeply. ‘Your servant. Send me a message.’ He frowned. ‘I leave in a week.’

  Solomon’s face fell.

  Swan smiled. ‘Listen – your father must have a way of moving things in and out of the ghetto. Get a pair of swords, and I’ll give you a first lesson in the garden.’

  Solomon smiled. ‘Thanks. My father may see this as a Christian’s attempt to entrap him.’

  Swan shrugged. ‘Your servant,’ he said.

  Walking along the wharf, looking for a boat, he couldn’t quite see why he’d liked the young Jew so much. It was like seeing a girl – he didn’t want to follow that thought too closely.

  A boatman waved, and poled in. As Swan stepped into his boat, he saw the ill-laced doublet standing behind a pile of barrels. He saw the man only for a second, but it was enough.

  He forced himself to smile and make a remark to his boatman.

  He sat in the cupola at the back of the boat, and managed – without too much effort – to sneak a look behind him.

  Another boat was leaving the pier. Was the black doublet in it? He wasn’t on the wharf.

  Swan wasn’t armed beyond an eating knife. Venice had laws about such things.

  Alessandro, despite his murmurings about being ‘disinherited’, was living at his father’s palazzo on the Grand Canal. Swan didn’t know exactly how to approach him. He got out of his boat on the Rialto and walked along the waterfront, enjoying the great cogs, the nefs and the galleys that stretched away like an aqua
tic forest to the south.

  He walked into an alley after the first bridge, and walked up the street quickly to a small bakery that Cesare liked. He turned in the door. The whole shop was the size of a lady’s wardrobe. There was just room for a customer or two to stand – then the counter, piled high with bread, and behind it, the ovens. It was hot.

  He bought a sweet roll. The very pretty girl behind the counter called them Hungarian. The girl almost distracted him from his intention, but he managed to be in the doorway lingering and munching when the black doublet went past him. Swan glanced back at the girl – Cesare’s interest revealed, although the Hungarian roll was miraculous – but she didn’t spare him so much as a look, and he stepped out into the alley, leaped over the very narrow canal, and ran along the walkway behind St Mark’s into the square.

  Black Doublet walked into the square and then began to search. He stopped and cursed.

  It was as good as anything the travelling mimes could produce. The man was truly angry, and he walked around the square, and then back along the wharf. Swan followed him warily. This was something he’d done often enough in London, as a youth. For various purposes.

  The man walked up an alley and came back down and almost caught Swan flat footed, but a stack of cloth bales saved him, and the man had no notion of being followed himself.

  He went up the next alley, saw the bakery, and stopped. Ran a hand through his thinning hair and stepped on to the portal. He said something. Nodded, and smiled – a terrible grin.

  When he emerged, he was moving quickly. Swan assumed he’d realised that Swan had stopped, and was now giving up. He walked west, through St Mark’s Square, over the bridges. It would have been faster for him to take a boat, but he didn’t – he was cheap.

  As darkness began to fall, he went into a maze of alleys behind the Grand Canal palazzi. After one turn and an ill look from a man who seemed as dangerous as Swan’s quarry, Swan gave up and walked back to the canal, catching a boat in the last rays of the sun.

  There was a magnificent palazzo dominating the canal just there. On a hunch, Swan pointed at it. ‘Who’s is that?’

  The boatman looked at him as if sorry for his provincial ways. ‘Where are you from? Naples?’ he asked, as if this was the worst insult a man could be offered.

  Swan laughed. ‘Yes, Naples,’ he said.

  The boatman smiled, seeing that his passenger wasn’t a complete fool. ‘That’s the Palazzo Foscari,’ he said.

  The next morning, Swan met Alessandro for a lesson. They were swaggering swords in a dry alley behind the inn. The watch had come and gone.

  ‘We’re to travel on a state galley,’ Swan said.

  Alessandro had taught him six positions. The positions were called ‘gardes’. His feet had to go . . . just so. His arms and his head also.

  It was very different from standing in the inn yard of the Swan with one uncle swinging at him while the other drank and made comments.

  ‘Look – if he covers his head, what can you hit? His legs, boyo! Cut at his legs. High, low. Left, right.’

  In fact the instructions often ended in the same place, but approached the subject from different angles. It was remarkably like learning a language from a new instructor. One started with verbs, another with nouns. Swordsmanship had a grammar, and Alessandro insisted that he learn it properly.

  ‘Do not just cut at my buckler!’ Alessandro said. ‘Have I not told you ten times to make a provocazione!’

  ‘Cutting at your buckler is my provocazione.’ Swan stepped back.

  ‘No! No, it is not! If you make such a move, it is an attack. It uses your effort, and now I will get to respond. Look!’ The Venetian came on garde – not, in fact, a garde that he’d taught to Swan yet.

  Swan got his sword and his buckler up, and the swords crossed at the tips.

  ‘Look!’ Alessandro said, and he stepped forward powerfully, his sword now crossed almost to the hilt with Swan’s. Swan pushed the sword away, and as he pushed, Alessandro’s weapon vanished under his and was at his throat, instead.

  ‘I provoked you by walking into your measure. I forced you to act. You acted as I expected, with pressure to my blade. I left your blade to have a picnic by itself, and I kill you, thus.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘That was a proper provocazione.’ He nodded. ‘Now you.’ He paused. ‘State galley?’

  Swan smiled, but he kept his sword up. He’d seen all this before. Alessandro insisted that he be on his garde all lesson. He reinforced the point by cutting suddenly at his pupil while they talked.

  ‘I have a source who says we’ll sail on Nike. And that the Bishop of Ostia is our patron.’ He adjusted his point until he was in the garde that Maestro Viladi called ‘Porta di Ferro’ while Alessandro called it ‘Coda Lunga Larga’. So many names.

  A language of its own.

  Alessandro stepped back with a flourish. ‘You are already much better. Maestro Viladi is very old fashioned, but he has improved your stance.’

  ‘He knows how to wrestle, the old maestro,’ said Swan. He still had a sore hip where he – all cocky – had attempted to throw the maestro.

  Alessandro laughed. Then he became serious. ‘We need to find you some armour that is presentable,’ he said.

  ‘I have it. At least, half-armour.’ He smiled.

  Alessandro shook his head in mock wonderment. ‘You work miracles. Have you had any trouble from Foscari?’

  ‘None,’ Swan said. Then he shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’ He told the story of Black Doublet.

  ‘That’s lucky,’ Alessandro said. Then he sighed. ‘Foscari can’t have me killed. But he can have you killed.’

  ‘One of my new friends says the Orsini are looking for me here,’ Swan said.

  ‘Christ crucified!’ Alessandro laughed. ‘You may be the only man in Venice for whom a trip to Constantinople is the safest option.’

  Alessandro suggested a few options to him. One was to spend a little money among the streetwalkers and derelicts around his lodging. He put this plan into effect immediately, paying a few centimes to each of a dozen vagabonds, and paying Joanna half a ducat to collect their information at the inn door.

  On Wednesday, he saw Black Doublet in the square of St Mark’s. But they were fifty paces apart, and he didn’t think the man was following him.

  He went to his lesson with Rabbi Aaron, and then took a boat across to one of the small islands – mostly to see if anyone would follow him. No one did.

  On Thursday, after mass, a boy approached Swan and handed him a note.

  ‘Have a sword,’ it said in Hebrew.

  Swan smiled. He went to his room and picked up his sword, wrapped the sword belt around it as Alessandro had taught him, and walked to the door. He flourished the sword at his landlord.

  ‘Messire Niccolo – may I walk abroad like this?’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ Niccolo asked. ‘Arsenali will ask you.’

  ‘I’m going to pawn it,’ he said.

  Messire Niccolo belched a great laugh. ‘You lie. But it is a good lie, and nothing the Arsenali can disprove. Go with God, my young friend. Don’t kill anyone I like.’

  In fact, no one gave his sword a second glance.

  At the gate of the ghetto, Solomon was ‘on duty’. He grinned when he saw Swan’s sword. ‘I have to take that from you,’ he said. ‘No Christian may walk armed here.’

  Swan handed it over. Another young man came to the gate, and Solomon escorted Swan to his father’s gate.

  ‘My father has sent the servants away,’ he said. ‘Just in case. This is my birthday present.’

  Swan went into the garden, where Solomon’s sisters watched from windows as the Englishman taught the Jew everything he knew about fighting with a sword in three hours.

  Solomon was an excellent student. Immediately, Swan discovered that the other young man knew a great deal about boxing and wrestling.

  ‘The laws only require that we not carry weapons,’ Solomon said. ‘There is a book by a Jew
of Warsaw on wrestling. I have read it. My grandfather was a famous wrestler and boxer.’ He made a head motion – something not Italian. ‘My father is more of a fighter than some of the men who work for him think.’

  The sun began to run down the sky. Swan was learning – as all swordsmen learn – that teaching another man to fence is the very best way of learning yourself. Teaching Solomon, just for one afternoon, had caused him to question a hundred things Alessandro and Maestro Viladi had taught him. Solomon couldn’t stop asking why and Swan found he had almost no answers.

  ‘Now let me exchange a few cuts,’ Solomon begged when Sarah, his sister, brought them watered wine.

  Swan shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. You have no control. No – stop – I have something just as good. Let me see your blade.’ He took the sword. It was the newest type – a strong, stout blade, but with the new hilt that Swan himself wanted, a backward-curving knuckle-bow to protect the hand from cuts, a finger ring so that the wielder could more accurately grip the sword for a thrust. The new hilts were all the rage in Venice.

  He tried the edge on his thumb, especially up near the point.

  ‘Is it a good sword?’ Solomon asked.

  Swan nodded. ‘Excellent. The latest-style hilt on a good German blade.’ He laid it on a blanket next to his own, which was an inch longer and had more of a taper to the blade, smaller finger rings, and no knuckle-bow. ‘Mine is Milanese, from about – eh – twenty years ago. A fine sword.’ He flexed it between his hands. ‘Heavy, but beautifully balanced for the weight. Yours is . . . lighter and quicker. When we come to fighting, I’ll show you how each has its advantages.’ He smiled, unrolled his cloak, and took out two bucklers – his own and Cesare’s. ‘Now we’ll have a little duel. But all you want to do is strike my buckler. This is how we practise in England,’ he said.

  For as long as it took for the shadows to reach across the garden, they were at it, swash and buckle. The sisters applauded from the windows, and Solomon grew bolder. And at last, when Solomon tried a great leap forward, and Swan had to drop his sword to avoid spitting his student, there was the sound of one pair of hands applauding from the end of the garden.