Tom Swan and the Head of St George: Part Seven

by Christian Cameron

  Cesare came and sat by Swan. ‘Come and fence,’ he said. ‘Sweat off your wine and your plots.’

  ‘My plots have proved as barren as the Queen of England,’ Di Bracchio said, and slammed his cup down on the table. ‘Let’s go fence, for all love.’

  Swan had been away a long time – a winter and a summer fighting in the Ionian sea and another winter riding back and forth between Rome and Vienna, cooling his heels with the Imperial Diet. He didn’t know their fencing school, but he followed willingly enough.

  ‘Where is Giovanni Accudo?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s in Padua on a special errand,’ Cesare answered. ‘He’s married!’ the Brescian continued. ‘I’d never have thought it of him. I asked him if he wanted to have the service performed at Madame Lucretia’s and he said—’

  Di Bracchio was already laughing. ‘He said that despite all the services he had performed at Madame Lucretia’s, marriage had never been mentioned.’

  The two older men were laughing so hard they had to pause in the mouth of an alley.

  Swan looked back and nudged Di Bracchio. ‘We may not have to go to your salle to fence,’ he said.

  Di Bracchio followed his glance and made a face.

  ‘We’ve been followed since we left the inn,’ Swan said.

  Di Bracchio cursed. ‘I’m tired.’

  Cesare bit his lips. ‘Come, gentlemen. I have another appointment after we fence …’

  Alessandro laughed. ‘What kind of appointment does a gentleman keep in the dark—’

  He interrupted his flow to draw his sword off his left hip.

  His right arm went all the way up from the draw so that the sword was over his head like that of an avenging angel. Swan drew his sword, and with a practised movement got his short cloak off his shoulder and over his arm – with his hand clutching a dagger.

  The sound of running footsteps came louder, and the three men, swords drawn, backed into the mouth of the alley.

  Even by starlight – no one had lit the street lamps – they could see that the running man was a Collona in red and yellow livery with the family’s papal rose embroidered on his doublet. They could also see blood on the yellow part of his livery.

  He saw the three men with swords and stumbled to a stop. ‘Protect me, my lords! For the love of God! They will kill me. My lords – I’m worth your trouble!’

  More feet, and torches, and shouting.

  Di Bracchio reached out, grabbed the man’s ruined doublet and pulled him in. Then all three backed two more steps into the alley.

  Like most Roman alleys, it stank. Unlike most, it had no alternative means of egress. A dozen Orsini appeared on the street.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Swan said.

  Cesare laughed. ‘I think we’re about to get our exercise.’

  ‘What have we here?’ asked the leading Orsini tough. He was big and broad and armed with a heavy sword and a dagger. ‘Don’t tell me that I have found the most noble sodomite and his two illustrious catamites?’

  Alessandro spat. ‘You mistake us for Orsini,’ he said.

  The Orsini in their red and white were all moving with the exaggerated motions of men on the edge of violence – head thrown forward, shoulders back, chests puffed out.

  One of the Orsini retainers flung his spear at Di Brescia with no more preamble. Swan parried it, his sword snapping out and deflecting the head.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to bring up cannon and lay siege?’ Alessandro asked. ‘You Orsini are so brave.’

  Another man flung a spear. Alessandro parried it to the cobbles.

  ‘Do you want it?’ asked a voice at Swan’s ear. The Collona retainer had retrieved the two spears and was offering Swan one.

  Swan took it, sheathed his sword and gripped the spear well behind the head with his right hand, thumb towards the butt, as the Venetian marines and the knights of Rhodes had taught him.

  ‘So, Messire di Bracchio!’ shouted the Orsini captain. ‘Tell us what it is like when you suck a dick!’

  Alessandro laughed. ‘Perhaps you will tell us, messire, what it is like to mate with a pig.’

  Halfway though this sally, Swan tossed his spear. He threw flat and hard.

  The Orsini captain took the spear in his chest, right in the ribs.

  He fell.

  Swan had taken a long step forward to throw, and now he followed it, plucking his arming sword from his scabbard. He slashed a torchbearer and scored with his dagger off the hip-draw across the back of another bravo, and then the Orsini faded back.

  Alessandro charged them too. He leaped, slammed his left heel down on the fallen Orsini captain’s hand, shattering the fingers and making the man emit a shrill scream, and then his sword-point flicked out and caught another man in the unprotected stomach.

  They drove the Orsini – the torchlit Orsini – up the alley and into the street, but having accomplished this feat they were almost instantly surrounded. Swan swirled his cloak and got his dagger up to parry on an incoming blow. He rolled a montante at a half-seen figure, pivoted on his hips and thrust – stoccato, and again imbrocato, as he passed forward and felt the soft yielding of his weapon’s point entering flesh, the almost audible grating on bone, and he whirled his cloak behind him.

  But the Orsini had recovered from the initial surprise of being charged by an inferior adversary. They bellowed the family war cry. One rogue blew his whistle, and they heard answering whistles in the darkness.

  Swan felt something go past his head, and only then saw that a spear had been thrust strongly from behind him. The blow clipped an opponent’s head, cutting his temple and forcing him to stumble back.

  ‘Thanks!’ Swan managed, as he covered himself against a head cut and stepped forward. It took a mighty effort of will not to move back when attacked in the darkness, but he was at Alessandro’s right shoulder. His cloak was all that was keeping the lithe Venetian alive.

  Di Bracchio’s sword was a blur of reflected torchlight. It was interrupted by parries that threw sparks, and punctuated by screams. The night was full of running feet.

  Swan and the Collona man actually crossed each other – Swan thrust clumsily, his left foot forward, across the red and yellow liveried spearman, and the Collona man in the same tempo thrust close to Swan’s right shoulder, eliciting a gratifying scream. Both men stepped forward, as if by prior agreement changing places and engaging new opponents.

  Swan drew a breath. He had one of the spears under his left foot, and he wanted it. He cast his cloak in the face of one man, threw his dagger – clumsily and left-handed – at a second, made a carefully timed cover high and to his inside line with his sword, and then flipped the weapon over and thrust. He left his sword in his victim, bent and seized the spear. As the head came up, he was already making his cover, back hand high, front hand low.

  And then he swung the long weapon like an axe. It was not a technique taught by either Messire Viladi or the Knights of the Hospital, but he beat three swords aside. He reached out – almost delicately – as his adversaries stumbled back – and thrust the spear one-handed, like an enormous sword, at the head of one of Alessandro’s opponents. His spear punctured the man’s skull, killing him instantly.

  He retrieved the thrust and swung – hard – from left to right, again clearing the space in front of him.

  There were now five Orsini stretched out on the wet cobbles.

  The rest of them – a fair crowd – had stepped back.

  Alessandro fell back into the mouth of the alley, and the Collona man fell in beside him. Cesare had lost his dagger and taken a blow to his hand – he was bleeding.

  Swan retrieved his sword. He liked his sword, and did not have the money to replace it.

  Alessandro surveyed the angry Orsini like a connoisseur looking at an artwork. ‘We have killed too many of them,’ he said sadly. ‘Now they will charge us.’

  The Collona man had begun knocking at doors in the alley.

  Cesare chuckled. ‘I don’t thi
nk I’m making my assignation,’ he said.

  Outside, an Orsini gave a grim laugh.

  ‘They have a crossbow,’ Alessandro said. He sagged.

  Swan took two steps deeper into the stinking alley. There, a small building – perhaps a cattle byre a hundred years before – leaned drunkenly on a taller house. Swan leaned his spear against the wall and climbed.

  Alessandro didn’t hesitate. ‘Follow the Englishman!’ he said.

  The crossbow spat. The bolt rattled around the alley, but all four of them were on the roof of the shed, which gave under their feet. Beneath them, a woman screamed as her roof seemed to collapse.

  Swan used the spear and a lead gutter to get on to the next roof, six feet higher. Its red tiles would have been slick in the rain, but they were a hundred years old and grown black with mould and pine pitch and all the effluvium of Rome. The footing wasn’t bad, and Swan ran up the shallow roof and looked down the other side.

  They had a clear run of rooftops for at least a block.

  The Orsini didn’t catch on directly.

  Alessandro was wriggling up a steep roof when he turned to the Colonna. ‘Are you alone, Messire di Colonna? Or is it possible we might find some allies?’

  The young man – he was not more than fifteen or sixteen – didn’t smile. He was panting, and Swan thought he was about at the end of his tether. But he managed to say, ‘No,’ and get to the top of the next roof.

  Swan gathered them in the shelter of a cluster of magnificent Turk’s head chimney pots. There was a small platform for a sweep, and space for four tired men to sit.

  ‘How many suits of clothes have I ruined in the cardinal’s service?’ Cesare said.

  Alessandro leaned over. ‘What’s your name, boy?’

  ‘I’m no boy,’ the young man said.

  They were high up, and despite the darkness, there was enough light to read facial expressions and clothing. Swan could see that the young man’s doublet was extensively embroidered.

  Swan remembered his skill with the spear.

  Alessandro nodded. ‘Are you Bernabo, my lord?’ he asked.

  The young man sighed. ‘Do as you will,’ he said.

  Alessandro nodded. ‘Colonna Primo,’ he said. ‘You have rare good fortune, my lord. We are servants of Cardinal Bessarion.’

  The first son of the Lord of the Colonna remained crouched by his chimney pot, panting. But after a moment, he nodded. ‘I’m much indebted to you, gentles. But I fear that we have lost the election.’

  ‘We?’ Swan asked.

  Alessandro nodded. ‘By opposing the Orsini candidate, we have, in effect, joined the Colonna.’

  Swan was looking at the street, four tall storeys below him. From this height, he could see the river, the bridges and the groups of torchlit men. Far from giving up, the Orsini were making a cordon around the entire Capitoline neighbourhood.

  Alessandro followed his hand and swore. ‘I think we killed too many of them,’ he said again.

  Swan shrugged. ‘If this is Colonna Primo, then the bastard I put a spear into was one of the Orsini – family, not thugs.’

  Alessandro smiled, his straight teeth shining in the darkness. ‘Maybe. By the wounds of Christ, Englishman, you have a real talent for stirring shit.’

  ‘Me?’ Swan asked, all injured innocence. ‘Me?’

  Alessandro was looking out over the gathering sea of torches. ‘We can’t sit here.’

  ‘Why not?’ Swan asked.

  ‘They’ll burn the building,’ Di Bracchio said grimly. ‘It has happened before. And by day they’ll have a dozen crossbowmen, or a hundred.’ He shrugged. ‘Listen – we must be losing the election – they own the streets.’

  ‘What about Malatesta?’ Swan asked. ‘Did we get men-at-arms from him?’

  ‘We had twenty of his men. But he’s the most expensive bastard …’ Alessadro paused. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m thinking that I can see his towers from here, and that if we made it to him, he would shelter us.’ Swan and Di Bracchio were whispering, heads as close as lovers. Swan could smell the cloves on his friend’s breath.

  ‘Or he might sell us to the Orsini,’ Di Bracchio said. ‘And we have to make it across the river.’

  The Orsini were moving again. Their torch men had linked up, and they were closing the circle.

  ‘At least their torches show us where they are and are not,’ Swan said. ‘We could cross at Saint Angelo.’

  ‘Unless it’s all a trap,’ Alessandro said. He tugged his beard. ‘I see no better alternative.’

  Ten minutes of climbing across rain-slick tiled roofs taught them that the Orsini had men on the tiles, too. A light crossbow bolt ripped through young Bernabo’s puffed and padded shoulder and left him bleeding.

  The rain fell harder.

  By a small miracle, some courting couple or some friendly householders had left a narrow wooden bridge across a street – just two boards and a rope handrail, but Swan found it while scouting ahead, and they were able to get across ahead of the Orsini. Alessandro tipped the slim bridge into space, and it crashed to the cobbles below. Its fall gave Swan a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Apparently Colonna Primo agreed, as he shook his head. ‘A long way down,’ he said.

  Three more houses, and Alessandro caught Swan’s sleeve. ‘I’m going back,’ he said. ‘They’re all around us. I’ll make a diversion.’ He pointed down at the Tiber, black as sin in the rain-soaked darkness and glittering with reflections, more like oil than water. ‘We need to get across the river.’

  Swan looked back at the torches. ‘They won’t expect us to go away from the cardinal’s palace,’ he said. He waved Alessandro away, confident that the older man wouldn’t indulge in false heroics. ‘Go with God,’ he said.

  He led them over a roof, and another, now close enough to the bridge to risk a descent.

  They were ahead of pursuit. Swan led them down an alley and across the roof of a baker’s shop he knew well. It was late enough that the fires were banked, but the smell carried on the cold damp air and was as good as a beacon. From the baker’s roof they emerged on to a plaza and the main road of Rome where it ran across the bridge by the old Tomb of Hadrian – now called the Castello Sant’Angelo.

  Swan had counted on their being soldiers on the bridge – men he knew. Instead, the sentry boxes were empty.

  So was the bridge.

  ‘Run!’ he called, and the three of them bolted across the bridge. But instead of going north into the Vatican, Swan led them south, along the houses and towards the older Roman suburbs – and the Malatesta castello.

  Any belief that they had outdistanced pursuit was quickly dispelled the first time Swan got lost in the maze of alleys and stopped. A crossbow bolt almost parted his hair. A second and third bolt rattled around the alley without hitting them, but the same darkness that clouded the accuracy of their assailants also made the bolts themselves almost supernatural.

  Confused, tired and scared, Swan led them back on to the rooftops, and they climbed and cursed their way southwards.

  A pause in the rain, and he saw the Malatesta towers to the south and east. He led them that way until the towers loomed over them. He was watching the nearest tower for life when he stepped over a gable end on to a new red-tiled roof – and his feet went out from under him. He slid.

  Only the relatively shallow pitch of the roof saved him. He slid, but when he spread his arms and legs, he slowed. The roof had a decorated edge and he stopped himself there with his feet.

  He lay there for too long, contemplating his own mortality.

  Then he got up, waved to Cesare, and eased his way across the roof, using the decorative edge for security.

  Behind his left shoulder, there was a burst of light. Screams.

  At his shoulder, Cesare coughed. ‘You have a plan for this part?’ the Brescian asked.

  They were at the streets that surrounded the Malatesta castello. Malatesta was far too cautious
to allow buildings to rest against his Roman fortress.

  ‘We’ll have to go down again,’ Swan said.

  Cesare looked below them. There were Malatesta retainers visible on the walls of the fortress and at the gate – and a swarm of Orsini in the plaza in front of the castello.

  Swan moved along the roof edge. The discovery of the wooden bridge many houses back had reinforced his belief in God, and now he went along above the Malatesta’s streets, searching for a rope, a walkway, anything that might allow him to get across on to the Malatesta’s walls – absurd as that seemed.

  But nothing offered itself.

  He clambered back to Cesare and young Colonna, who was shivering so hard that his teeth were probably audible in the streets below.

  ‘He’s soaked and he’s lost a lot of blood,’ Cesare said.

  Swan nodded and spoke with what he hoped was confidence. ‘I have a plan,’ he said.

  Without his spear, he climbed down to the street. This proved far more difficult than he had expected. He had to lower himself on to a balcony, and then climb down the house ivy – which would not really support his weight, and he crashed on to the lower balcony, slamming his left hip into the stone balustrade.

  But he had better luck with the third balcony. Someone had a lover, or a friend – or had merely hung laundry. Whichever, there was a coil of rope and a convenient pole. Swan swung down, feet groping for purchase, and at the cost of his gloves and his dignity, made it to the street.

  For an additional miracle, no one had seen him – at least, it seemed as if none of the Orsini had. Lights were appearing in the Malatesta wing opposite, and a woman’s voice shouted a warning.

  Swan ducked, and an arbalest bolt took his hat off his head.

  Swan looked at the crossbowman, who was at the end of the street. Too far. The man was preparing a second shot, but Swan had other fish to fry. He waved at the Malatesta tower and his helper there, and ran around the corner of the street and into the small square in front of the Malatesta main gate, where the Orsini were gathered.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ he screamed.