Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Two

by Christian Cameron

  A few steps away from the dais, Swan saw Alberti. The man was smiling.

  Swan had had enough. ‘Some people today,’ he said, ‘find a return to the past very comforting.’ He looked at Alberti. ‘So much easier to mine the past for ideas than to concoct new ones.’

  Malatesta met his eye as he turned.

  Swan shrugged. ‘I have already tangled with your court magus three times today. I am not as impressed by the classical past as he is, but then I am a mere soldier.’

  ‘The past, as you call it, tells the truth. There is no morality greater than my own will.’ Malatesta frowned. ‘Plato and Aristotle didn’t pretend that there was an eternal punishment for disobeying an old man in Rome.’

  ‘Neither, my lord, did Jesus,’ Swan observed. ‘But I am a poor theologian, I’m sure.’

  ‘Does it not raise your head out of the gutter, Suane? The idea that you yourself control your own destiny? That you can do as you will? And judge yourself? And make the world to suit yourself?’ Malatesta’s relatively high-pitched voice was all but singing.

  Swan smiled at the Lord of Rimini. ‘I’m not at all sure that’s what Plato said, my lord,’ he said. ‘And if I dared—’

  ‘Dare!’ Malatesta ordered.

  ‘If I dared, I would say that any hill brigand has that for a philosophy. To me, it is not brilliant. It is, in fact, tedious.’ Swan bowed.

  ‘You would contest with Alberti about what Plato said?’ Malatesta asked. He was both sarcastic and wondering.

  Better to be hanged for a lion than a lamb. ‘My lord is aware that the Bible can be mined for passages that can be used to justify almost any behaviour?’

  Malatesta smiled like a wolf, and showed his teeth. ‘All too well.’

  ‘So too with Plato and Aristotle. And any other authority.’ He straightened involuntarily because his back hurt. ‘Or so it seems to me.’

  ‘You are an odd man, Swan. My daughter tried to have you killed this afternoon.’ He shrugged. ‘If you had stolen from me, I’d have had you tortured to death. You know this?’

  Swan nodded. He felt himself flush. ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Pulled apart by horses,’ Malatesta said. ‘Or your belly opened and your body buried in putrid sand so you rotted. I think of new things – you understand? Do you know what I have my torturers do first?’

  Swan closed his eyes and steadied himself as best he could.

  ‘First they interrogate you to find what you loathe and fear most. I find that, like the teaching of any other lesson, each torture must be tailored like a good doublet to fit the victim. Some men can be utterly humiliated by a mere rape or two. Others fear water, or offal, or shit. Or beetles. Or a woman’s scorn.’ Malatesta’s eyes rested on his. ‘Do you understand me?’

  Swan nodded. He couldn’t speak.

  Malatesta exhaled. ‘Good. I intend to let you go, even though I am aware that you are a spy for Bessarion and the Pope. Alberti says I should kill you before you kill me.’ He shrugged and changed the subject, as mercurial as a madman. ‘Do you want to take my English archers off my hands?’ he asked.

  Swan tried to move with the Wolf. He nodded. ‘I would very much like to hire them, as well as Ser Columbino.’

  ‘Take them, then, with my blessing – or my curse, as you will. They do more damage to the castle than all my other soldiers, and they eat too much.’ The Lord of Rimini tugged his chin, amused. ‘I find Alberti tiresome.’ He paused.

  Swan kept his expression neutral and bowed. ‘This, at least, I share with my lord,’ he said.

  Malatesta waved his hand. ‘Go disport yourself. You gave me great pleasure last night with your antics. But I tell you, if you lie with the governess, I will see that your death is as humiliating as can be arranged. Is this understood?’

  Swan hadn’t even thought of bedding Signora Sophia. Yet. He bowed. ‘Your wish,’ he said, ‘is my command.’

  ‘Nicely put.’ Malatesta laughed. ‘By the way, I liked your jousting.’ He waved Swan away, and Swan had to pause at the edge of the dais to be sure he didn’t fall.

  Montorio intercepted him. Swan was so shaken that he didn’t manage a jest or a greeting, and Montorio nodded.

  ‘My lord can be difficult,’ he said. He watched his wife, who was demurely drinking wine with two other ladies.

  ‘And yet you serve him,’ Swan said.

  Montorio shrugged. ‘May I tell you something you must already know? They are all much the same, when they achieve so much power. I have served Montefalco and Sforza as well.’ He shrugged. ‘In many ways, my lord is the best of the three. He speaks the truth.’

  Swan shook his head, and said a prayer of thanks for Bessarion, who didn’t want to be Pope.

  Swan went to the jakes, and then, prompted by an unuuusal degree of caution brought on by Alberti’s looks and Malatesta’s promises, he slipped out by a servant’s door into the courtyard for a breath of air. There he found that a sutler had set up an awning by the barracks tower and torches were lit. Fifty men and twenty women stood in the courtyard, drinking wine. Three itinerant musicians were playing and one of his Greeks had a stringed instrument and was keeping pace.

  Swan went over and bought a cup of wine. It was quite good – a deep red with a strong, even taste – and he drank it eagerly.

  Don Juan, the Spaniard, bowed to him and he returned the bow. ‘I gather we serve you, now,’ he said. His teeth glinted in the torchlight. He was surprisingly small, when not in harness on horseback.

  Swan bowed. ‘You serve His Eminence,’ he said. ‘I am merely the messenger.’

  Don Juan smiled. ‘As you are now our patron, I think I should tell you that two men have been paid to kill you.’

  Swan felt tired. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  The Spaniard nodded. ‘They were foolish enough to ask after you. Both garrison soldiers of the town. They have passes to be in the castello, but they stick out.’ The Spaniard pointed with his chin at a pair of local girls. ‘Stella and her sister heard them talking.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Swan asked.

  ‘I think they intend to kill your Burgundian first,’ Don Juan said. ‘I have not seen them, you understand. I merely pass on the rumour.’ He shrugged.

  Swan bowed and moved to the stable doors, which had been incorporated under the awning so that the stable’s outer ward was part of the impromptu tavern. Sure enough, his hunchback boy was sitting on a stool just inside the doors.

  ‘Clemente,’ he called softly. ‘Run to my bed and fetch my sword, would you, please?’ Swan passed him a silver coin, a small groat he’d received in Rome as exchange for a bit of food. The silver bit was as nondescript as the meat in the pastry had been.

  The boy ran off into the darkness.

  Swan went and stood in the light. He found Ser Columbino’s men all together, and bought them a cup of wine. Even Ser Zane raised his cup. ‘A month advance?’ he asked.

  Swan nodded. ‘And another month when we reach Venice,’ he said.

  Zane turned to the other men. ‘Let’s take it, friends.’

  Don Juan shook his head. ‘I want no man to make comments about my honour,’ he said. ‘But fighting Turks is not like fighting Italians.’

  Swan laughed. ‘Yes – with the Turks you know from which direction the blows will come!’

  Zane raised his cup. ‘Eh, Suane – someone told you that you are funny?’ He laughed.

  Clemente signalled to him from the edge of the crowd.

  Swan nodded to the men of the condotta and began to move carefully around the edge of the crowd to Clemente. He didn’t know most of the men and women drinking at the outdoor tavern, and he didn’t want to be knifed in the crowd.

  He reached Clemente at the edge of the torchlight. ‘Go and find Peter,’ he said. ‘He’s serving in the great hall.’

  ‘I don’t have livery,’ Clemente whined. ‘I can’t go in the hall.’

  Swan cursed. ‘Very well – go to the kitchen and ask for him.�
�� Swan had to hope that Malatesta’s kitchen functioned like Bessarion’s as a clearing house for servants’ messages.

  Clemente wasn’t happy about the message.

  Swan slipped off behind him. He moved into the shadows at the edge of the courtyard, where the armourer’s shed overhung the cobbles. Had he intended to kill a man crossing the courtyard, he would have hidden behind the open-air anvil of the farrier’s shop, but there was no one there, or in the armourer’s stall.

  Swan moved as quietly as he could, sword held in both hands, still in its scabbard.

  If they were in the yard, he didn’t see them. And he wasn’t inclined to cross the yard openly to provoke them. He moved down the long ramp – almost completely dark – that led from the courtyard to the kitchens, and heard Peter’s voice at the bottom. A door opened and firelight pierced the darkness.

  Swan felt his way down the cobbled ramp with his thin-soled dancing shoes. His scabbarded sword point scraped lightly along the wall to keep him oriented.

  There were no assassins by the kitchen door. ‘Peter,’ he said.

  Peter nodded. ‘I got your message.’

  ‘I should go back to the party,’ Swan said.

  ‘They have probably run off,’ Peter said. ‘The risk would be insane. Malatesta’s guests?’

  Swan thought over what he knew of Malatesta. ‘I think it is a very reasonable risk,’ he said. ‘If the lord is willing to turn a blind eye.’

  Peter shrugged. ‘Then walk me back to the tower. I don’t even have a dagger. The dinner’s over anyway.’

  Swan nodded. He handed Peter his own dagger and the two of them walked with Clemente between them all the way to the doors of the barracks. Peter caught the eye of one of the French women.

  ‘Am I done for the night, milor’?’ he asked. The sarcasm was just detectable.

  Swan nodded. ‘Yes, Peter. Have a … pleasant evening.’ He looked at Clemente. ‘Don’t emulate Master Peter – it will stunt your growth. Go up and sleep by my bed.’

  Clemente nodded. ‘Yes, milor’.’

  Peter laughed.

  Swan turned away and slipped back into the darkness by the farrier’s shop. He moved as cautiously as he could – stopped moving when the courtyard fell quiet and again moved as quickly as he could while the bells rang midnight.

  But the campanile rang the half-hour before he made it past the gate guards and on to the walls. Tonight he had to assume that the guards might be in league with his assassins. If they were there.

  And he had to meet Iso, or so he told himself.

  He made it on to the wall walk without being seen and began the circuit of the courtyard. The revellers were going to bed. A man and a woman were coupling against the gatehouse wall, and by the glint of two steel sallets he could see that the gatehouse guards were watching them with their full attention. Swan kept moving clockwise along the wall, taking his time with the towers. But they were manned on the top floor, not the wall walk, and he was cautious.

  At the gate he followed the bastion walls out over the gatehouse.

  He was two-thirds of the way out along the wall when he saw something move just to his right. He hadn’t made it to the niches yet, and the movement uncovered his assailant.

  His sword checked the assassin at arm’s length, held in both hands – he passed forward and got his scabbarded point under his assailant’s right armpit and lifted – rotated on his hips and threw his attacker.

  He thought that it was Iso as soon as he felt the swell of her breast by his forward hand. And she tumbled away from him, rolled a somersault and came up on her feet.

  She leaned to make his weight change and kicked.

  He caught her foot and pulled. Then he fell atop her as she hooked his ankle. He meant to fall atop her, but both of them had the same intention, and they fell to the stone in a tangle on their sides.

  It was Iso. He knew her body as soon as he had her flat on the stone parapet beneath him, his scabbarded blade pressing on her smooth ivory throat. ‘Demoiselle?’ he said pleasantly. Her body was harder than most women’s. She was not soft.

  He had hoped it was she, but the strands of all the plots were getting a little complex for him.

  ‘Where’s the ring?’ he asked.

  Her squirming under him was not lascivious. ‘My father will have you pulled apart by horses,’ she panted.

  Swan changed his position so that he was kneeling, and she was still pinned, and had no escape without risking incredible pain and a dislocated shoulder. ‘Lie still,’ he said. ‘I truly mean you no harm. But I will have the ring, and I don’t think you have given it to your father.’

  ‘Do you imagine I have not alerted the guards?’ she spat.

  ‘That is exactly what I imagine,’ Swan said, but he was not at all certain. ‘I think you read lips, and you knew I was to meet Maestro Alberti here last night, and you elected to replace him. And now I think he has paid men to kill me. Unless you have, or your father, or all of you together.’

  She smiled, her teeth bright in the dark. ‘If I wanted you dead, I’d kill you myself. Alberti is the kind to hire others.’

  She reached up as if to spit in his face. And instead licked his lips.

  Swan’s body gave him away.

  She laughed. ‘You are strong, I’ll give you that,’ she said.

  Skull popping like a melon under his hands in pitch blackness, he imagined, trying to maintain control over his lust.

  ‘Where’s the ring?’ he asked, but his voice was too breathy. He cursed inwardly.

  ‘You know,’ she breathed, ‘I did not alert the guards. And likewise, you have no intention of harming me, do you?’

  Cursing out loud, Swan sat back and lifted the sword from her throat.

  She rose to a seated position and laughed in her throat. ‘I liked that you tried to protect Fredda from my father the other night,’ she said. ‘That was well done.’ She leaned over, and as he secretly had hoped, she kissed him.

  And kissed him.

  And once he’d kissed the place where her neck met her shoulders – by the time his thumb circled one nipple and he had her back against the wall – he no longer cared whether she was a witch, or not. In a matter of heartbeats, he lost interest in assassins, too.

  When the first salmon-pink light of a spring dawn coloured the distant horizon, she kicked the tip of his nose. He saw that she still had one of the red cloaks the French whores had been wearing.

  ‘You are very clever,’ he said. He smiled.

  ‘You are going to be very tired,’ she said. ‘I think you should sleep all day and stay another night.’

  ‘My men-at-arms—’ he said.

  ‘If you will stay the night,’ she said, with false coquettishness – performed with humour, not in mockery – ‘If you will stay another night, and do me a small favour in Venice – you are going to Venice?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I will give you the ring.’ She sighed. ‘It is very powerful.’

  Swan laughed. ‘If you insist,’ he said. ‘I fear the phrase a small favour in Venice.’

  She rubbed a thumb across one of his nipples and tried to remove her amulet from where he had hidden it, but he had detected the trend of her movements and he caught her.

  ‘For the ring,’ he said.

  ‘Most men fear me,’ she said. ‘They want my body, but I scare them.’ She looked at him. ‘You are different.’

  Swan nodded. ‘Not really. You scare me too, demoiselle. I have truly never met anyone like you.’

  ‘Do you think I am mad?’ she asked.

  Swan kissed her. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She looked into his eyes. ‘I could hate you, too,’ she said.

  Swan thought about that. ‘I’d prefer the current position,’ he allowed.

  She laughed and went away in a swirl of musk and old wool.

  Swan was as cautious descending from the walls as he had been ascending them. But the pink sky didn’t provide enough ligh
t to illuminate the puddle of piss on the steps, and his heel slipped. He cursed.

  And froze. He’d seen movement from the stables.

  It was close enough to morning that men might be alert in the stables, especially if Malatesta was going hunting. Swan strained to see …

  And almost met his death.

  The knife flashed at him as he passed out of the tower, powered by a tall, strong man hidden by the bulk of the wall.

  Fuck.

  He’d been distracted by the men currying horses in the stable, and he’d given himself away with his slip in the darkness.

  He functioned on instinct.

  His right hand was on his sword hilt and his left hand was holding the scabbarded blade halfway down, both thumbs pointing towards the top of the hilt. Without a thought, he lifted the sword to cover his head and caught his assailant’s dagger blade on his cross-guard. He exploded at the man, drawing the sword with his right hand reversed and slamming the pommel into the man’s mouth. Teeth folded under the blow, and the man grunted, both arms rising to cover his head.

  But thanks to Don Juan, Swan knew there were two, and he turned, volte stabile, and stabbed down, as if his arming sword was a long dagger in his high right hand. The blade went right over the second assassin’s crossed arms and into his neck, killing him almost instantly. But the sword was caught in the cartilage of the voice box and he had to remove it with a kick.

  Swan turned, sketching a sloppy cut – terrified he’d left the other man too long. The man covered with his dagger but his cover was weak and he took a bad cut on his left shoulder and fell.

  Swan ground the fine bones of his enemy’s dagger wrist against the stone lintel of the gate tower until the man gave a choked scream, and then knelt on him, sword across his neck. The downed man choked, and then begged. He spoke for as long as a better man might have prayed the paternoster.

  Swan rose to his feet and passed his sword through the downed man’s throat – a short stab that met almost no resistance as the needle point released whatever soul the assassin might have had.