Tom Swan and the Head of St George

by Christian Cameron

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Renaissance

Synopsis

1450s France. A young Englishman, Tom Swan, is kneeling in the dirt, waiting to be killed by the French who have taken him captive.

He's not a professional soldier. He's really a merchant and a scholar looking for remnants of Ancient Greece and Rome - temples, graves, pottery, fabulous animals, unicorn horns. But he also has a real talent for ending up in the midst of violence when he didn't mean to. Having used his wits to escape execution, he begins a series of adventures that take him to street duels in Italy, meetings with remarkable men - from Leonardo Da Vinci to Vlad Dracula - and from the intrigues of the War of the Roses to the fall of Constantinople.

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

Foreword

There’s something very . . . historical, about writing an historical serial for e-publication. If it’s been done recently, I haven’t heard about it, and yet it has impeccable historical credentials – before we had the epub, we had the magazine, and in that format Dumas did it, and Conan Doyle, and a host of other authors with magnificent credentials; Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, and Charles Dickens.

It’s a fine format. Instead of a single pulse of seven hundred manuscript pages, the author can write in blocks with independent storylines that may still have an arc and a complex interweb of characters and motivations. I was resistant – but not for long.

So here is Tom Swan, my first serial character. Tom is firmly based in history; Italy was full of itinerant Englishmen, especially soldiers, throughout the period, and so was Greece. I confess that the man who forms the basis for the character was not English but Italian – Cyriac of Ancona, sometimes known as the ‘Grandfather of Archaeology,’ who roved the Levant in search of antiquities and manuscripts that he could beg, borrow or steal for the Pope and other rich clients in their burning zeal to rediscover the ancient world. Ancient manuscripts were then, and remain, incredibly valuable; recent re-discovery of a complete text of Archimedes in a palimpsest shows that such manuscripts are still out there, and give us an idea of the kind of treasures for which Tom Swan – and Cyriac of Ancona – searched.

If this serial has some success, I’ll write more – the format, as I say, is fun, and allows me to explore some nooks and crannies of history – and even some characters that I’d love to take to greater depth; Philokles, in the Tyrant series; Archilogos (Arimnestos’s Ionian adversary) in the Long War series; Geoffrey de Charny in the late Middle Ages – the list goes on and on. And I’ll add pieces rapidly – perhaps even one a month.

Readers of my other books are aware that I’m a passionate re-enactor and also a military veteran, and that these experiences inform my writing. Those who are new to me deserve the following reassurance – I’ve worn the clothes and armour, and shot the bows, and rowed, and even ridden some of the horses. In the process of working as an intelligence professional, I met people who exercise real power every day, and I got an idea of how they work – and how history works. But I don’t do this in a vacuum and I receive an amazing level of support from friends, fellow re-enactors, veterans, academics crafts people and artists. In those last categories, I’d like to thank Dario Wielec, who drew the illustrations; he has a passion for historical detail that delights me every time I see his drawings, from any period, and you can see more of his stuff at http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.ca/. Finally, the ‘covers’ for the Tom Swan series are provided by Albion Swords, who are, to me, the premier manufacturers of accurate replica swords in North America. I use their products every day. How many people can say that – about swords?

Chris Cameron

Toronto, June 2012

For good or ill, Thomas Swan had been one of the first men into the French gun positions and one of the last to be taken. So he was on the right of the line of captives as the blood-maddened crowd of peasants and foot soldiers killed Englishmen.

Swan was too tired to struggle. He thought about it. By the time he’d watched them kill a couple of men-at-arms worth far more than he was worth, he realised that they were all going to die.

He took a breath and wondered somewhat idly how many he had left. A Frenchwoman killed an archer by cutting off his penis with an eating knife. The archer screamed, utterly wretched, and the crowd cheered her. Swan took another breath.

It was his first battle – his first campaign in France. His first time out of London. But he’d heard enough from his mother’s brothers to guess why the Frenchwoman had killed the archer.

A big man – a really big man – shouted at the French mob in French. Swan’s French was quite good. The man didn’t even sound English. He heckled them, and when two French gunners came for him, he picked one up. The man stabbed at him with a long knife. The big man shrugged after the Frenchman put a knife in him, and threw him into the crowd.

Off to the right was a party of men on horseback. They were pushing through the line of wagons that guarded the back of the gun emplacement.

The big man was still fighting. The Frenchmen had scattered, and one was loading a handgun. Another aimed a crossbow and pulled the lever, but his aim was poor and the arrow killed a third Frenchman, a franc-archer at the edge of the crowd.

Swan felt the Frenchman behind him shift his weight, and hunched for the blow. He couldn’t help it. He thought of twenty wrestling tricks his uncles had taught him to take the man’s sword, but he could barely raise his arm. He’d fought . . .

Talbot was dead.

It was all unbelievable. He thought, Damn it, I’m here to make my fortune! I’m only eighteen!

He took another breath, and waited to die.

The horsemen pressed into the crowd, swords drawn. Armoured knights. And a cardinal. Swan knew what the round red hat meant.

Two francs-archers grabbed an English archer, tore his shirt, and then beheaded him in three gory strokes of their short swords. The knights did nothing to stop it, and Swan’s hopes died.

The crowd bayed like a hunting pack and pushed towards the latest killing, and the cardinal was almost unhorsed. He shouted at them, and the crowd moved again – two of the knights pulled their horses up on either side of him, protecting him. The nearer of the French knights reached out and cut a French soldier with his sword. The man flinched away.

Swan pushed through his despair. It couldn’t hurt. It might even help.

‘Kyrie eleison, Pater! Kyrie, Agie Pater!’ he shouted in Greek.

All that learning ought to be good for something.

The cardinal’s head snapped around, his eyes searching.

A Frenchman’s fist crashed into Swan’s head.

He stumbled.

Now and in the hour of our death. Amen.

He was hit again, fell to the earth, and . . .

Thomas Swan awoke to crisp linen sheets and light.

His whole body hurt.

Good Christ, I . . .

‘I’m alive!’ he said aloud. And felt like an idiot, but he was very much alive. Certain parts were insisting they were alive.

He looked around – there were palettes laid on a wooden floor, and whitewashed walls. A monastery, then.

‘One of the English devils is moving!’ said a woman’s voice in French.

A burly monk appeared with a staff. Swan bowed. He was naked, which put him at a disadvantage.

‘Tom Swan, at your service,’ he said. Then switching languages, he said, ‘Serviteur,’ in good Gascon French.

The monk pointed one end of the staff at Swan and called, ‘Help! Help!’

It might have been funny, except for the real possibility he was about to be killed. Swan bowed again. ‘My interests are entirely in food, friends,’ he said.

Other men on palettes of straw and clean sheets were stirring. Swan had to assume that the big man in the bandages was the Fleming who had fought the Frenchmen. The man wasn’t moving. He had one arm out over his sheet, and that arm was covered in massive bruises.

He counted sixteen. Sixteen men.

‘Good Christ,’ he said.

The burly monk continued to threaten – ineptly – with the butt of the staff. He shouted for help again, and there were distant footsteps.

A slim man – older, but with angelic blond hair and a less than angelic face – appeared from behind the monk. ‘You are the barbarian who speaks Greek?’ he asked.

It’s difficult to appear dominant or even charming when you are naked and covered in dried blood and bruises. Swan shrugged. ‘Greek. French. Italian. English. Latin.’ He smiled in what he hoped was an ingratiating manner because he really wanted to live.

The blond man nodded. ‘Come with me, then,’ he said in Latin.

Swan spread his hands as if to indicate his nudity.

The blond man was dressed foppishly like an Italian – tight hose, tight short jacket, a tiny hat perched on his curls. He had a very effective sneer. ‘His Eminence has seen a naked man before,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not as gamy as you – but still. Move.’

The fop drew a dagger from behind his back.

Swan considered the possibility of taking the man’s weapon and running. He didn’t have the bone-weary feeling of defeat – his joints ached, he had bruises, but he could fight.

The slim blond man looked as if he knew what he was about. He kept his empty hand between them, and the dagger well back.

Swan walked along the brightly lit corridor. A nun saw him and turned her back. Then she moved quickly down the corridor and shouted ahead that a naked man was coming.

She turned back and looked at him. And spat.

He almost laughed.

He took a deep breath. They were at a closed door.

The thin man stepped out of the way. ‘If you do anything I do not like, I’ll put this in your arse,’ he said, flicking the point of the dagger from side to side. ‘Understand, Englishman?’

Swan nodded.

‘Say something in Greek for me,’ the man said. His grin wasn’t friendly.

‘Oinos, o phili pais,’ Swan said. He smiled.

‘Eh,’ the other man said. ‘Not the way Greeks say it, but still. In you go.’

Swan was ushered through the door.

Every monastery has a room for receiving rich or noble visitors – panelled in wood, lined in tapestries, sometimes with precious silver and gold in a cupboard carved with lives of the saints. This House of God was no exception, except that the cupboard had no carved doors. And no silver.

The cardinal was sitting in the sun. Swan shrugged. ‘I’d like something to wear,’ he said. ‘Your Eminence.’

The cardinal nodded. ‘You speak Greek?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Swan answered, in French.

‘What in heaven’s name suggested that you should call out to me in Greek?’ the cardinal asked.

Swan fingered his beard and tried to think. ‘You’re a cardinal,’ he said. ‘From Italy.’

The cardinal raised both eyebrows.

‘People in Italy study things in Greek. My Greek master was Italian.’ Swan was suddenly babbling. ‘My sword master was Italian, too, but—’

The cardinal barked a sharp laugh. ‘As it happens, I am Greek,’ he said.

Swan took a deep breath, racked his brain for the Greek for ‘to save’. ‘Σας ευχαριστώ που με έσωσες, αγιότητα σας. Thank you for saving me, Eminence.’

‘I am very pleased to have saved such a young scholar. Are you – hmm – someone important? Worth a fine ransom?’

It occurred to Swan to tell the truth, but he couldn’t risk it. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘My father will pay a thousand ducats for me.’

The cardinal nodded. ‘I told Alessandro you were a nobleman’s son. He doubted me. A thousand ducats? Excellent. I’ll see you well lodged, then. I’m going to Paris. Do you have friends in Paris?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I had hoped to go to the Sorbonne,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work out.’

‘Do you read Hebrew?’ asked the cardinal.

Swan had to shake his head. ‘No,’ he said with real regret.

‘Have you read Plato?’ asked the cardinal.

‘My Greek master had a copy of Aristotle’s De Anima. And Xenophon’s Apologia. That’s really all I’ve read.’ It was an astounding piece of truth, for Swan. But Bessarion was difficult to lie to.

‘You’ll enjoy Paris,’ the cardinal said, and waved his hand. As Swan turned to leave, he said, ‘Don’t do anything . . . hasty. This place was burned by the English. Some of the nuns were raped. All the silver taken. Yes? You understand? They would like to kill you.’

Outside the door, the thin blond looked him up and down. ‘I’ll find you clothes,’ he said. He sneered. ‘But you’re not worth a copper centivo, much less a thousand Venetian ducats. Are you?’

Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘I most certainly am,’ he said.

‘Eh,’ said the Italian. ‘We’ll see.’

Back in the cells, where the men lay on palettes. They were waking up. There were a dozen francs-archers in the corridor, eyeing the nuns. The nuns glared at him with unconcealed hate.

One of the Frenchmen tripped him as he went by. He went down and rolled, avoiding another kick.

The Italian punched the Frenchman in the ear so fast that Swan was very glad indeed he hadn’t grabbed for the dagger. The punch went in – uncontested – and the archer fell and his legs kicked – once.

‘My prisoner,’ the Italian said, in French. His dagger was out again, and he gestured with it. ‘Don’t make me hurt any of you.’

The Frenchmen growled, but they didn’t do anything more.

‘Do you have a servant?’ asked the Italian, his eyes on the Frenchmen.

‘No,” Swan admitted, and then narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. He paused. ‘If he survived.’

The Italian looked over the men, most of whom were still on their palettes. ‘One of these?’ he asked.

Swan reached out and pointed at the Fleming, who was still unconscious. ‘If he’s alive.’

The Italian looked at him. It was a long look – eye to eye.

‘Really?’ he said. The faintest sign of a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. ‘The English devil that all the Frenchmen are waiting to hang is your servant. Eh?’

Swan shrugged and licked his lips. ‘He’s not English,’ he said. ‘He’s Flemish.’

The Italian raised an eyebrow. ‘Eh bien. If you say. I will do my best to keep him from being shorter by a head.’ He shrugged. ‘You are clever, Englishman. I give you this for free.’

Swan nodded. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Not yesterday, by God.’



An hour later, he was on a bad horse, wearing a bad doublet and a foul shirt and a pair of braes that had shit stains and hose with holes in them – soled hose and no shoes.

Thomas Swan had spent his life being the poorest boy among rich boys. He knew what good clothes were like. He just never seemed to have them. The kit in which he’d been sent to France was the very limit of what his mother could afford, and it was gone – every stitch, down to his eating knife and his belt purse.

The Fleming was head down over a mule, wearing a shirt and braes and nothing else.

They sat mounted in the courtyard. There were raised voices in the portico.

The cardinal was insisting that the English prisoners were not to be murdered.

The Italian picked at his beard. ‘They’ll all be dead before we’re at Amiens,’ he said.

Swan took a couple of shallow breaths.

The Italian spat. ‘Dogs,’ he said.

Swan looked around. ‘Might I have a sword?’ he said. ‘As I’m a gentleman on ransom?’

The Italian looked at him.

‘A dagger?’ Swan asked. He wished he had something with which to bargain.

The Italian drew his dagger and started to clean his nails. He looked up. Their eyes met. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘Oh, as to that . . .’ he said.

The Italian laughed. ‘Tell me your name, English devil.’

Swan bowed in the saddle. ‘Thomas Swan, Esquire. Of London. And yours?’

The man smiled. ‘Alessandro di Brachio,’ he said. ‘Courtier.’ He smiled. ‘Formerly of Venice, and now of the world.’ It was a very unpleasant smile. He reached behind him into the leather roll behind his saddle and rooted about.

His hand emerged with a long, slim dagger. He held it out.

Swan reached for it.

The Italian whipped it away and tapped him on the head with the hilt. Swan reached for it and missed again. He almost fell out of his saddle.

Alessandro laughed. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and put the long dagger back in his bedroll.

‘Bastard,’ Swan spat.

Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. When he grinned, his gold tooth caught the sun. ‘And you?’

It was such a good answer that Swan had to laugh. The Italian laughed back. ‘You are almost as fast as a Venetian,’ he said. ‘But not quite.’

The cardinal came out from under the portico. The abbott bowed, and all of the nuns came and kissed his ring, along with some of the monks.

It seemed incongruous that, under his robes, the man wore boots. With spurs. But he did, and he mounted his big warhorse easily.

‘Come,’ he said, and Alessandro prodded the convoy into motion – four wagons, a dozen soldiers, and an entourage of priests and servants.

Swan found himself riding with a pair of notaries, who conversed in Latin and ignored him. All they spoke of was church politics – and what a waste of time the attempt to negotiate with the English had been.

‘We thought we’d win,’ Swan said, as much to indicate that he knew what they were talking about as because he really wanted to contribute.

The nearer man all but fell off his pony. ‘You speak Latin?’ he asked.

‘Oh!’ Swan said. ‘I thought we were speaking English.’

The notary on his right rolled his eyes. ‘You are pleased to make light of us,’ he said.

Swan nodded. ‘Passes the time,’ he said.

‘Why are the English such barbarians, then?’ asked the first notary. ‘War, war and war. You kill your own kings and then come to France to kill theirs.’

‘Our king is the king of France,’ Swan said automatically.

‘An untenable position,’ said the right-hand notary. He held out his hand. ‘Giovanni Accudi.’ He grinned. ‘My grandfather was English,’ he said.

Swan took the offered hand.

The man on the other side of him relented. ‘Cesare di Brescia,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I had a grandfather,’ he mocked the other, and spat. ‘Who the devil knows who he was? The English probably killed him.’

Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry to see how unpopular the English are,’ he said. He didn’t sound contrite.

‘Violent people. A sword in every hand. Killers, every one of them.’ Giovanni nodded. ‘Like Florentines and Brescians.’

‘Like fucking Milanese,’ Cesare shot back.

‘Wine?’ Giovanni asked, and held out a glass flask.

Swan drank some. He tried not to be greedy. ‘Messire Accudi, I must tell you that yesterday I thought I was about to die without ever tasting wine again.’

Accudi nodded. ‘Welcome to life,’ he said. ‘Have another drink, but leave some for Cesare. He’s far more dangerous than I am.’

‘Fuck your mother,’ Di Brescia said, but he smiled. ‘Listen – Giovanni’s a gentleman. He doesn’t even need this work. I’m a simple working man. I actually read books for my degree.’

‘Then why don’t you know more?’ Accudi asked. ‘Give me the flask if you are going to talk. Damn you to hell – it’s empty, you sodomite.’

‘Are you two sure you’re not soldiers?’ Swan said.

‘Oh, no,’ Cesare choked out. He was laughing so hard he was having trouble staying on his horse. ‘We’re lawyers. Can’t you tell?’

The sun was past high in the sky and it was brutally hot. The horses were flagging. The notaries had run out of wine and were debating the role of the Trinity in a manner so blasphemous that Swan, who thought himself worldly and jaded, had to ride a little behind them in a vague superstitious belief that lightning from the sky would kill them all.

But when they’d stopped cursing God, he rode back up to them.

‘Why don’t we . . . stop at an inn?’ Swan asked.

‘An inn? Here? In France?’ Accudi laughed. ‘You English have burned them all.’

‘Fat lot you know,’ Swan said. ‘This is the Dordogne. This is English. Frenchmen burned all this.’

The Italians laughed. ‘It’s hard to tell you apart, it’s true.’

After a while longer, some of their soldiers left the convoy and rode ahead. When they crested the next ridge, he saw a town in the distance, fully walled. Closer, he saw the convoy’s horseman talking to a farmer by the road. He came and spoke to the cardinal, hat in hand, and kissed his ring. The gate to his walled farm opened, and they rode in.

Men came with water, and the horses drank noisily. Swan drank water, too.

He went over to the Fleming, and lifted his head.

The man looked at him, eyes open, and Swan felt the man’s body tense.

‘I’m a friend,’ he said. ‘My name is Thomas Swan. I claimed that you’re my servant.’ He spoke low and fast.

The Fleming moaned.

Alessandro appeared at his elbow. ‘He is awake, your servant?’ he asked. ‘Give him some water. Here. I put a little wine in it.’

Swan took the cup and put it to the Fleming’s lips. He drank greedily. And moaned again.

‘He is your master, this Englishman?’ the Italian asked the Fleming.

‘Uhh. Uhhh.’ The Fleming moaned. There was blood coming out of his side.

The Fleming met Swan’s eye, and just for a moment . . .

‘You’re drowning him,’ Swan snapped, trying to sound as authoritative as his father.

‘Master,’ muttered the Fleming.

Alessandro looked at Swan and raised an eyebrow. ‘Heh,’ he said.

The next evening they came down a ridge into Périgeux, passed the gates after a cursory inspection and a great deal of fawning, and made their way to the Abbey of Chancelade, as Swan heard said repeatedly. The town didn’t seem to boast an inn, but the abbey was huge – like a palace.

There were wagons parked all along one wall, and the stables were full. Swan ate with the notaries and poured watered wine into his ‘servant’. After some consideration, he went to the kitchens.

‘What do you want, shit-stain!’ bellowed a huge woman.

He bowed. ‘To be your lover, madame!’

She screeched. ‘You’d need a prick two feet long,’ she said. She eyed his stained braes. ‘And I don’t think you have one. Eh?’

‘Something tells me you are not a nun,’ Swan said.

‘Something tells me you are not a Gascon,’ the woman replied. She laughed. ‘Eh! Tilda! There’s an Englishman!’

A younger, horse-faced woman came out of the fireplace. ‘What do you want, then,’ she said in English.

Swan turned his charm on her. ‘Honey. A good-sized dollop, if you would be so kind.’ He bowed. ‘For medicine.’

‘Medicine, is it? And honey so dear.’ Tilda had an armload of firewood.

‘I could carry wood for you,’ he said.

Tilda nodded. ‘You can have your honey just for hearing the sound of English spoken. But I wouldn’t mind having you carry the wood.’

After he had carried enough to fill the kitchen’s giant maw of a fireplace many times over, she pointed to a stool. ‘Sit, brother,’ she said.

She handed him some wine, which was decent enough. He watched the kitchen staff and listened carefully. Most of them were locals – a few were from the south, and he saw several of the cardinal’s Italian servants move through. One pinched a girl and got a clout on the ear for his pains – another grabbed a loaf of bread and laughed.

Tilda brought him a plate of cut tongue and bread and another cup of wine. “Tell me what medicine you make with honey,’ she said.

Swan smiled at her. She was quite pretty, in a homey kind of way. She had big bones and a strong waist. And large breasts. She was no beauty, and yet her straight back and her graceful carriage would have made her seem so, even if he hadn’t been on the brink of death a day before.

“The white honey is not formed of pure thyme, but is good for the eyes, and for wounds,’ according to Aristotle,’ he told her.

She nodded and smiled. ‘Like enough,’ she said. ‘Likewise my mater always said so.’ She sat back with her wooden cup of wine. ‘You’re a prisoner?’

He nodded. “Sir John Talbot was defeated—’

‘At Castillon,’ she said. ‘It’s common knowledge.’

‘They were killing the prisoners,’ he said. He hadn’t planned to say that. He planned to be light hearted, or evasive, or perhaps heroic. He shrugged. ‘I lived. The cardinal took me in.’

She nodded. ‘Poor dear. But soldiers – live by the sword, die by the sword.’

He laughed. ‘You have a hard heart, madame.’

She shook her head. ‘I followed the armies for a year or two, din’t I? I’ve known a soldier or two.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll get some honey for you.’ She paused, as if weighing him up. ‘Come back when I’ve served the gentles dinner and I’ll see your linens get washed,’ she added. Her eyes met his, just for a moment.

Swan walked out to the stable. He caught Alessandro’s eye – the man was obviously watching him – and waved honey at him. The Italian man-at-arms came over. ‘You have a sweet tooth?’

‘For my servant’s wounds,’ Swan said.

The Italian nodded. ‘What’s his name, this servant of yours?’ He held out a hand. ‘No – never mind. Why complicate this? What’s the honey for?’

Swan shrugged. ‘It’s in Aristotle. Good for wounds.’

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Are you really another bookman? Aristotle is so full of shit about so many things.’ He thrust his chin at the Fleming, lying on his blanket. ‘But my first captain put honey on wounds. The Turks do it. Let’s see.’

The Italian soldier helped him fetch hot water, and watched as he bathed the Fleming, washed his wounds, dried them with the man’s shirt, and then pasted honey over them, pushing it boldly into the suppurating hole in his side where the Frenchman’s dagger had gone in.

‘He’ll probably live,’ Alessandro said. ‘That knife hit his ribs and went up, not down.’

‘I’ll tell him that,’ Swan said. His Italian wasn’t that good and Alessandro made him feel a little light headed.

‘You ought to wrap it, now that you’ve cleaned it and put the salve on.” Alessandro looked at him, one eye raised.

‘I don’t happen to have a spare bolt of linen in my baggage,’ Swan said.

Alessandro gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Perhaps God will provide,’ he said. He swaggered out, and returned a little later with a long piece of linen. ‘I found it,’ he said.

Swan wrapped the Fleming, and Alessandro actually lifted the man while Swan got the bandage under him. He made it as tight as he dared. The Fleming moaned a few times but remained resolutely unconscious.

When they were done, Swan was too conscious of his sweat-soaked shirt and his shit-stained braes to strip, and he felt dirty and unfashionable with the dapper professional soldier. But his mother had taught him that the best defence was a good offence.

‘If you keep helping me like this, I’ll have to assume you aren’t a complete bastard,’ he said.

Alessandro smiled. ‘Maybe I am, though. I am a bastard. If I thought you meant that as an insult, I’d kill you.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ Alissandro said.

Swan realised he’d said too much. But the man-at-arms bowed and walked out the stable door.

When the Italian was gone, the Fleming opened an eye. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘If the bastard asks again.’

Swan dropped the end of the bandage. ‘You’re awake!’

‘You just rolled me over and shoved something sticky inside my fucking body,’ the Fleming said. Peter. ‘Honey?’

‘Yes.’ Swan put his hand on the other man’s head. Everything he knew about medicine was from books.

Peter opened his eyes. He was a big man with a heavy brow, but his eyes held a great deal of intelligence. ‘I’m an archer, and a fucking good one,’ he said. He said ‘fucking’ as if it was two words. Fuck – ink. ‘But I suppose I can be your servant, at least until we’re out of this. They kill everyone else?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I think so.’

Peter’s eyes closed, and then opened. ‘Thanks for saving me.’

‘You saved me,’ Swan said. ‘When you went for the francs-archers, I was next.’

Peter grinned. ‘Kilt one, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Swan said.

‘Bring me some unwatered wine, eh, Master?’ Peter asked.

Swan nodded. ‘I’m Thomas Swan,’ he said.

Peter shut his eyes again. ‘Aye. Got it.’

Swan ate with the notaries. They had to buy wine and Swan had no money, and he suspected he was going to wear out his welcome eventually, but for the moment, he drank.

They were at the very last table in the hall – the lowest of the ‘gentles’. In fact, some of the upper servants – the cardinal’s steward, for example – sat above them.

Swan didn’t mind. The food was cold, and served on bad pewter with too much lead in it, but he didn’t mind that, either. He saw Tilda at another table. She didn’t serve directly, but directed the younger girls and boys as they waited on the tables. He couldn’t catch her eye. She stood with her back determinedly to him.

That didn’t bode well for clean linens, or for wine for Peter.

The two lawyers wandered off into an argument about the merits of the judicial duel – again, into a bit of theology so tedious that Swan couldn’t, or wouldn’t, follow them – and he took the chance to look around. Well off to his right, on a dais at the head of the hall, the cardinal sat with a dozen local worthies – mostly men. Below them sat his household – Alessandro, for example, was only two tables from the Prince of the Church. In the next row of trestles there was a crowd of French merchants – mostly young men with daggers, but a handful of older men in fine clothes, and one important-looking man-at-arms who sat, proud as Lucifer despite his old coat, and looked angrily at the high table, where, as Swan could see, he clearly felt he belonged.

Swan nudged Cesare. ‘Who are they?’ he asked.

Giovanni shrugged. ‘Rich merchants. Who cares?’

Cesare shook his head. ‘Merechault was the king’s officer for wagons, I think. He will ha