Weapons clattered to the ground.
Swan looked at the stables. He couldn’t see an exit, but he had to know.
He found Ser Zane at his back. ‘Get them all disarmed,’ he said. ‘Put them all face down on the cobbles. No massacre, you hear me?’
The Venetians at his back were quite ready to rid the world of twenty traitorous noblemen. He could hear the taunts.
He couldn’t chase Foscari. There were too many orders to be given. He had Di Bracchio and Loredan taken up and moved to a nearby doctor’s house. He sent for help for the other wounded.
He insisted that the Arsenali and the stradiotes who had stormed the back of the inn stay in place. The stradiotes started to comb the inn – the Albanians dragged a man from a straw mattress and killed him before Swan or any of the men-at-arms could intervene. After the headless corpse was thrown from the inn’s windows, Swan forgot about Foscari and went into the central room of the inn. He found Graitzas and a dozen stradiotes, Greeks and Albanians. One of them was methidicaly punching a Venetian. The young vicitim’s head already had the horrible puffiness of a heavy beating.
Swan grabbed the nearest man – not one of his own. He caught his hand and pushed it back over his elbow, then caught the elbow and threw the man to the floor.
Graitzas had a dagger in his hand. He almost looked like a reasonable man. ‘They killed friends of ours,’ he said.
One of the Albanians rubbed his thumb across a long knife. ‘They killed Loredan,’ he said. ‘They want to let in the Turks? Let them see what Turks are like.’
The other Greek men all grunted.
Swan spoke directly to Graitzas. ‘Loredan is not dead. I beg you – these men will all be tried. In courts.’
The Albanian spat. ‘This one is a Dandalo. His family will buy his freedom. He gutted Simon Kallikrates. I say he gets the same while there are no Dandalo to protect him.’
‘I say they all go to the Ten.’ Swan put his hands on his hips. It didn’t seem the time for a high-toned moral argument. ‘At worst, you can ask for ransoms.’
The Albanian spat, but Graitzas looked interested. ‘You say Loredan is alive?’
Yes,’ said Swan, hoping he wasn’t lying.
The Dandalo boy had a good sword. Swan took it and its scabbard and nodded to the Greeks. ‘I think Foscari is in the stables,’ he said. ‘If he hasn’t escaped.’
All of them moved like hunting dogs who have found a scent.
‘Let Dmitri finish the upstairs,’ Graitzas ordered.
Swan led the rest out into the cortile. They spread out – a long line with about a yard between each man. The stable wing was open on the ground floor and the stalls were set back from the open archways.
‘Get torches,’ Swan ordered. A dozen torches appeared, held aloft by eager boys. The alarm bells were still sounding, and outside the gates of the inn there was a veritable army of apprentices and Arsenali. The men-at-arms were being stripped of their armour in the courtyard. The captured nobles were all face down in the muck.
With torches at their backs, the dozen men with Swan moved slowly forward under the arches.
The men hidden inside didn’t wait to be found. Desperate and hopeless, they charged. There were more of them than Swan expected.
There were so many that he felt a moment of panic.
His man was in half-armour. He had a partisan and he swung it like an axe and Swan stepped back, and as the man thrust, Swan parried with his sword. He reached with his left hand and stepped forward heavily with his left foot, reaching for the haft of the spear. The armoured man leapt back and pulled. Swan stumbled, caught his sword in both hands, got it on the haft of the spear in desperation and then slammed it into the armoured man’s head. The man had a helmet – Swan’s blow still snapped his head back, and he dropped his spear.
But another adversary emerged from the dark at a run, caught the Greek at Swan’s left shoulder by surprise and spitted him. He wore a breastplate, and it glinted gold. Swan turned and cut – a sloppy low mezzano that nonetheless landed. In the dark, Swan couldn’t see whether he’d hurt the man or not.
The dying Greek tangled the man’s legs with his javelin even as Graitzas swung a war hammer into the head of Swan’s first opponent.
The man in the gold breastplate stumbled, caught himself, and turned on Swan, sword held high.
The yard was full of men – men with spears and swords and handguns and crossbows – Venetian citizen militia, hundreds of them. There was no escape for the man in the golden breastplate.
‘Mine,’ said Swan. He hadn’t mean to say it, or to sound quite so arrogant.
Foscari – it was Foscari – circled to the left, trying to put Swan between himself and the crowd. ‘I owe you this,’ he said. He shot out a stoccata thrust and then an overhand imbrocata. Swan caught the first in a simple parry with his forte, but for the second he didn’t back up a step and the swords crossed at the hilts. Swan wound his sword around Foscari’s, looking for a cut to Foscari’s face, and kicked him in the knee at the same time, and Foscari leapt back.
Swan gave him no respite. He cut hard, overhand, a flashy cut, and then followed it with a montante cut from the reverse angle, making Foscari parry and parry again – heavy blows to the head that he could not ignore.
The third roll of his wrist and Swan stepped off line and cut – not high, but low – and scored on Foscari’s thigh while the Venetian nobleman’s sword was still high, protecting his head.
Foscari stumbled forward into a long lunge, his point aimed at Swan’s gut, and Swan made a false-edge parry and kicked the outthrust knee. It was easy – the other man had two leg wounds and he was moving badly. The knee broke with an audible snap like that made by the priest breaking the host in church.
As Foscari fell, Swan stepped on his sword and turned to the crowd. ‘My prisoner!’ he shouted.
Only the immediate assistance of Ser Zane and all the stradiotes prevented him from being overrun by enthusiastic Arsenali and militiamen eager to blood their weapons on the hated Foscari traitor. But Swan got Foscari into the inn, screaming in pain from his shattered knee, and got a cordon of trusted men around the building. Slowly, but without blood, Swan got the militia outside the gates, and they were shut.
Swan had enough sense left in his exhausted head to send Petr to Balthazar. He bore a message addressed to Isaac, and on it Swan wrote one word.
‘Flee.’
Then Swan sat down at the long trestle table in the main room – stained with a hundred years of red wine and lamb stew and fish. It was sticky. He didn’t care. He pillowed his head on his arms and went instantly to sleep, his borrowed sword still clutched in his fist.
He awoke to the reaction of the Council of Ten – forty Coleoneschi, the mighty condotierre Coleoni’s bodyguard, had been ferried in from Terra Firma and they took control of the inn and all the neighbourhood around. Two masked men bearing writs sealed by the Senate took control of Foscari, who looked pale and grey with pain and defeat.
In fact, the aftermath – a grey day with a slow, wet wind that didn’t produce enough rain to wash the cobbles – was an orgy of arrests throughout the Venetian republic.
Swan was escorted by a dozen Coleoneschi back to his own inn. He was tired and angry and unsure of whether he was under arrest or not. Petr was nowhere to be found, and Will Kendal met him on the stairs.
‘Where’s Giovanna?’ he asked. ‘They won’t let me out. I want to break some heads. Who are they?’
Swan jerked a thumb at the two silent men now standing guard at the base of the steps. ‘They are Bartolomeo Coleoni’s veterans. Venice’s best men.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t get them to talk, so I’m lying down. I saw Giovanna last night, headed for safety. She’ll come back.’
He lay down, and Clemente brought him water. Later, Clemente awakened him to say that Giovanna was at the Ca’ Bembo and had sent a message, and the Ca’ Bembo servant was below.
Swan got up. He had four wound
s – the worst of which was to the palm of his left hand, which had been cut three times, at least, and which had bled all over his bedclothes. His left hand was closed like a claw, and needed attention. His right arm ached – he had got caught on a man’s armour and it had cut him, a shallow rip that nonetheless ran a hand’s breadth along his arm and had bled through all his clothes. He could barely use the arm. He felt fevered.
He got himself down the steps. A bright boy with flaming red hair stood there in the Bembo livery.
‘Ah, Messire Suane! My master’s son, Alessandro, sends you greetings. He says – Salut, il capitano! He also says he has “the women” all safe. And a fine collection of wounds, which I see Messire Suane shares, eh?’
Swan smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm. ‘I have a few wounds but I am well enough.’
‘If you are fit, I am to say you are welcome to dine with the Bembi tonight.’ The boy looked at the two grim mercenaries in their full harness. ‘At Ca’ Bembo.’
The shorter of the two Coleoneschi grunted.
Swan went and stood in front of the man. He was dirty, his clothes were ruined, and he wasn’t feeling his arrogant best. He still drew himself to his full height. ‘I would like to go out,’ he said.
The shorter man-at-arms shook his head. ‘No. Orders.’
Swan shrugged. ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.
Both men-at-arms shrugged.
Swan bowed to the boy – which made him hurt everywhere, but it seemed a kind of protest and it certainly impressed the boy. ‘You see how it is,’ he said.
The boy nodded. ‘I will convey all of this,’ he said. ‘My lord can trust me – I understand nuance.’ He swept out and Swan laughed.
Before the nonnes rang out, Ser Zane came in – with another pair of Coleoneschi – and behind him came four of his crossbowmen carrying Ser Columbino. He was clean and carefully wrapped in linen. He raised a hand to Swan, who had bathed and was eating fish stew.
‘Not dead yet,’ he said.
When he had been taken to his room, Zane came and sat with Swan. ‘Took one under the arm,’ Zane said. ‘Too fucking brave.’ He made a face. ‘But he’s lucky – the spearhead glanced on the ribs and …’ He gave a shrug that was something like a flinch. ‘Cut the pap off his chest, and some skin. Some muscle. But no penetration.’
Swan writhed at the description. His back had revealed a dozen black bruises, and his deep cuts showed white fat under the blood – blood which had stained the whole of his bathwater like wine. He was himself wrapped in boiled linen rags. He’d put honey on one wound. The wounds worried him, so he drank.
He felt sick. The wine made him feel sicker, so he drank more.
Ser Zane leaned close. ‘Why are we fucking under arrest?’ he asked.
Swan shook his head. ‘No idea. I can make some guesses – we know too much, we are suspected of complicity, Loredan wants all the credit for himself, Venice is going to pretend this never happened …’ He shrugged, despite the pain.
‘Christ on the cross,’ Zane spat. ‘Fucking Venice.’
Swan lost a day to a fevered, drunken sleep. He woke confused in morning light that proved to be evening – he watched the sunlight play on the wall and thought about the fights – and the stupid mistakes he had made. He thought of failing to grab the haft of the first spear – he thought about Iso’s naked body. He thought about standing on the deck of a galley at night, and the canopy of stars.
He fell asleep again, and woke to the same light. A few minutes?
The whole night. It was morning and his limbs were so stiff that he gave a gasp when he tried to roll in the bed. He was deep in the inn’s best feather mattress, and everything hurt.
Clemente called his name.
Swan got his feet. It took him time, and Clemente kept calling – Swan’s head was somewhere else, or nowhere. A black depression had settled on him, and he thought – They’ve come to take me. Why did I think I could help?
He managed a short prayer.
He stood. Much of his body protested. The world spun for a little while. He was wearing a shirt so old that it was transparent, a pair of linen drawers and some carefully wrapped bandages that were stiff with his blood. It was cold.
‘Coming,’ he muttered. His first word in two days.
He flung open the rickety door to the hall. There was Clemente, bent like a bow, and Petr. And Loredan, pale and dressed in spotless black wool.
Swan bit his lip.
Loredan frowned. ‘I apologise – you should never have been placed under house arrest. My colleagues …’ He made a motion with his head.
Swan had to support himself against the door frame. ‘You apologise?’
Loredan took him by the elbow and steered him to the steps. The grim men in armour were gone.
‘When I didn’t report and the alarm was rung,’ Loredan said, ‘some powerful men panicked. They summoned Coleoni.’ Loredan made an expressive gesture of amusement. ‘This is comic mostly because, under other circumstances, Coleoni would have been a greater threat to the Republic than Jacopo Foscari. Coleoni’s killers have maintained order – his men are already back at Mestre. He himself is claiming all the credit for suppressing the treason.’
Swan made it to the bottom of the steps. He managed a lopsided grin of cynical amusement. ‘Of course.’
‘Of course,’ Loredan agreed. ‘But the Ten know better. Fear nothing. I will see you rewarded. But I must ask you …’ He looked at Petr. ‘Your man was taken by my people leaving the Jewish ghetto. Tell me the truth, now.’
Peter looked haunted. He had clearly had a difficult two days.
Swan straightened up. ‘I owe Balthazar. He had nothing to do with the plot, but his brother was the Sultan’s agent. Balthazar took an enormous risk to help us.’ Swan was shading the truth – Balthazar had taken the risk to save Swan. But the Ten had no need to know that. ‘I told his brother to run.’
Loredan’s face remained impassive. ‘I see.’
Swan shrugged. ‘Am I arrested again?’ he asked.
Loredan shook his head. ‘No. You preserved Foscari – superb. I have him. The rest are pawns and fools and mercenaries.’ He looked at Swan. ‘My path has crossed Balthazar’s many times, but never as an ally,’ he said.
Swan didn’t feel civil or careful. ‘Alessandro saved your life, and I don’t think he loves you,’ he said.
Loredan looked away. ‘I am aware that I … may have been mistaken – about Messire di Bracchio. Who will, I think, very soon be Messire di Bembo.’ He stood up. ‘At any rate, you will receive a number of awards, Messire Suane. Not least of which will be our lasting friendship.’
‘Venice has friends?’ Swan asked.
Loredan actually cracked a smile. ‘A few,’ he said. ‘I am permitted to inform you that in the euphoria following Foscari’s capture, the Senate has approved money for your crusade.’
Swan threw back his head and laughed.
Loredan frowned at his levity. ‘I promise you that Foscari’s Senate would not have approved,’ he said.
Peter barked a laugh. ‘Christ,’ he said in English. ‘All that to be allowed to fight the Turks.’
Swan’s cynicism was rudely punctured over the next week. The first signs of spring thaw were the arrival of his suits of clothes, beautifully finished, from the tailor – paid for by the Senate and brought round by a Squire of the City. He also brought a gift purse with three hundred ducats.
Swan gathered Ser Columbino’s lances and the English archers. He and Petr worked out the shares, and they divided the purse. One man had died – a crossbowman – but all of the men-at-arms and squires had wounds, and they were at first a sullen crowd, but the sun poked through the ever present grey sky and warmed their bones, and the sight of a hat full of gold did a great deal to improve everyone’s mood. At four ducats a share, every servant boy had enough to spend riotously, and the men-at-arms had two months’ pay.
But there was better to follow. Loredan deliver
ed the treaty by which Venice promised to remit its Church dues from Terra Firma for the general war against the Turks; Swan took his copy to deliver to the Emperor. He also brought them patents; Swan, Ser Columbino and Ser Zane – and Petr, of all people – were given Venetian citizenship. ‘There will be a formal ceremony of thanks,’ he said. ‘Coleoni will take all the credit, but you and Ser Columbino and Di Bracchio will all be rewarded.’ He nodded. ‘I think you will enjoy it.’
Swan received a renewed invitation to dine with the Bembi. So, four days after the night of blood, Swan was rowed along the Grand Canal, with Petr to attend him and Will Kendal, summoned by name to escort ‘Signora Giovanna’. Swan was dressed in his new clothes, which discomfited him – they fitted perfectly, but the doublet was extravagantly panelled in green and red and white, as were the hose; instead of the conservative clothes Swan thought he had ordered, he looked like a multicoloured popinjay. But they were decently embroidered, of magnificent materials and beautifully made, and they caused his landlord and his Venetian acquaintances to bow and murmur compliments.
Swan was a little afraid to wear them. But he did. He set them off with the new sword he’d purchased by the Rialto that morning, after a Venetian doctor with more arrogance than medical knowledge had pronounced him fit. The sword was not just an extravagance – Loredan had warned him that he was still a target for the Orsini and the remnants of the Foscari conspiracy.
Di Bracchio met them in the riva of the family palace on the Grand Canal. He smiled. ‘It is a very special evening,’ he said. ‘I put it off in waiting for you.’ He bowed. ‘Your clothes are beautiful.’
Swan thought he was being mocked. He moved the half-cloak to cover his doublet.
Alessandro shook his head. ‘I mean it. You look like a Venetian. And now, I understand, you are to be one. Bessarion will be delighted.’
Indeed, the Palazzo Bembo was lit from the ground floor to the very top of the tall and magnificent arches of the fourth-floor loggia. Inside was magnificence after magnificence, and Swan, who had known Alessandro for years, had to reassess his view of his friend. ‘You grew up here?’ he asked.
Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade: Part Three Page 7