Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade

by Christian Cameron

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Renaissance

Synopsis

Following on from Tom Swan and the Head of St George, Tom Swan and the Siege of Belgrade is the next instalment of the fast-paced series set in the turbulent Europe of the fifteenth century.

Fifteenth Century Europe. Tom Swan is 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

Swan awoke, hungry and tired. The muscles in the inside of his thighs ached, and those on the outside ached, too. The small of his back ached. His nose was cold and he huddled deeper into his blankets.

The smell of food, worming up from the cardinal’s kitchens, combined with the very urgent need to piss.

He threw back his blankets. In that moment, he thought, first, of Violetta, who had shared this very narrow bed with almost silent enthusiasm, and second, of standing on the night-time deck of a galia sotil1 of the Order, watching the stars, the ten thousand stars – and third, by some transference of the stars, to the feeling of dancing – dancing with forty other people, dancing beautifully, his whole body tuned to the music …

He pulled the blankets back over his naked shoulder and imagined Theodora’s body.

He coughed.

Kicked the blankets off and rolled to a seated position. And then, his thighs burning from twenty days in the saddle, he pushed himself to his feet to face another day.

‘Fuck,’ he said, in English.

A few minutes later, he was leaning against the great kitchen fireplace in his master’s kitchen. He had tall boots hurriedly laced to his small, tight doublet – and a plain brown gown hung on the back of the chair, matching the doublet’s severe brown. He had troubled to shave. His only apparent concession to worldly vanity was a red jewel that burned on his finger – a big garnet in a gold ring, deeply cut with an eight-pointed cross.

All the kitchen staff were men. Cardinal Bessarion disliked scandal, and some said he disliked women, as well, but be that as it might be, his house was staffed with men, from the gnarled hands of the veteran cook, Alceste, a Catalan, to the phalanx of pretty pageboys who served the cardinal’s food. They weren’t doing much. The whole palace seemed empty.

Alceste was overseeing the creation of a set of game pies. But he liked Swan, and his affection showed in an apple tart that a grinning boy brought the Englishman with a steaming cup of hippocras. Swan wolfed it down, his thoughts clearly elsewhere, and the cook cursed.

‘My food not good enough for my lord?’ he said.

Swan snapped back into focus – giving offence to any cook was foolish, let alone the one who ruled your own kitchen. He bowed – much the same bow he would have made to the cardinal on a formal occasion. Back straight, he sank on one knee with his right hand crushed to his heart.

‘Oh, most illustrious prince of apple-tart bakers,’ he began.

‘Flatterer,’ the cook spat. ‘You do not even notice my apple tart. You inhaled it without so much as a sign of delight.’

‘My senses were ravished …’ Swan began.

The cook rolled his eyes.

Swan sighed. ‘I’ve been on the road three weeks, illustrious Alceste. All the way to Vienna and back.’ He might have said again. He’d been to Vienna too often, this last winter. He’d also failed to get to Vienna, not once but twice, snowed into Alpine passes or marooned by choked rivers and collapsed bridges.

The cook, unimpressed by his sufferings, sniffed as if there was something in the kitchen that was slightly rotten.

Swan leaned towards the older man. ‘I’ve been hungry since I left,’ he said, with perfect honesty.

Maestro Alceste’s ill-humour – assumed only to wrench a compliment from his favourite courier – vanished. ‘Hungry? No one in my kitchen is ever allowed to be hungry!’ he said.

Boys ran in every direction. ‘His Excellency gave a dinner for ten cardinals,’ he said. He named dishes – peacock, roast boar, lamb in a sauce …

Fresh bread, the crust tough, nearly perfectly armoured in sesame seeds …

Wine – two Venetian bottles, each three-quarters empty. Swan produced his own glass – like most gentlemen, he carried a glass in a small leather box in his travel case. While he was savouring the sort of wine that princes of the Church drank, the bells rang for ten o’clock in the morning, and the high, clear sound of mass could be heard beginning at the church of St Cesaro across the courtyard.

Peter, his ‘servant’, lurched into the kitchen. Unlike the other servants of the cardinal’s men, Peter had his own quarters, his own watchword, and was sometimes sent on errands himself. He was Dutch, tall and thin, a master archer. He, too, had just ridden to Vienna and returned. So had Antoine, a Frenchman who mixed the arts of cookery with the arts of the sword. Antoine was greeted as a returning hero – a family member – and much embraced.

Peter walked as if his knees were locked, but he made it to the long bench at the servant’s trestle table and collapsed on to it. Antoine moved from hug to hug and plopped down next to the Dutchman.

Swan slid his own wine glass under Peter’s reaching hand. The Dutchman emptied the glass and scooped a slice of lamb – a beautiful, fresh, succulent young lamb, but several days old. He ate it, and another, and another …

The three men sat and ate.

Maestro Alceste watched them benevolently. He liked men who would actually eat. Too many of his guests were the merest gourmands – a few were outright sinners, at least against food. But these three always ate – well. Nor was Antoine above helping out.

‘Ten cardinals?’ Swan asked around a huge mouthful of bread and wild boar. ‘Vrstmth?’ – the last being a meaningless set of syllables that emerged from his full mouth. He meant ‘Really?’

Alceste laughed. ‘You two know that the Pope is dead?’

Swan sat back, thunderstruck.

‘He was sick. Our Excellency called to him the good princes of the Church, and they dined together and discussed who is to be the next Holy Father.’

‘I wrote down everything they said,’ piped in a cherubic little boy with bright blond curls. ‘Messire Alessandro told me to!’

Peter grumbled in his throat.

Swan raised his eyes. ‘Who’s the next Pope, then?’ he asked.

Alceste shrugged. ‘Our master,’ he said.

‘Oh, sweet Christ,’ Swan said piously.

Peter grunted and reached for another piece of lamb.

‘Where is everyone?’ Swan asked.

Alceste looked at him as if he were a particularly inept serving boy. ‘The cardinal is in convocation,’ he said.

Swan looked at Peter, and they both sighed.

Swan cooled his heels outside the cardinal’s officer for an hour. He had looked for the cardinal’s secretary; for Alessandro di Bracchio, the cardinal’s head of intelligence and Swan’s own officer; for Giannis or any of the cardinal’s Greeks. The feeling of being alone in the palace pressed on him.

Eventually, he pushed into the cardinal’s study and left the treaty – the document he had been sent to the Imperial Court at Vienna to procure – on the desk.

Peter waited in the doorway. ‘Ve are not velcome here,’ he said simply.

Indeed, the whole study seemed alchemical – there were skulls, and books, and scrolls, but if the cardinal were conjuring a spirit, it was the spirit of the classical world – there was a bust of Miltiades, and another of Plato. Swan saw scrolls he’d stolen for the cardinal, and others he’d purchased – he saw a play that Peter had smuggled out of Constantinople in his quiver. He frowned.

‘Alessandro must be about,’ he said.

Peter squinted. ‘Could you plees come out of there?’ he asked. ‘You make me nerfous.’

Swan was curious that Peter, who could stand in a battle line and loose accurate arrows on men attempting to kill him, could not bear to see him enter the great man’s study, but men had different barriers, he knew. ‘Where would Alessandro go?’ he asked.

Peter retreated a step and Swan looked over the cardinal’s desk again. But His Eminence was a veteran of many conspiracies, and his desktop was as empty as a town looted by the Swiss.

The two of them paced through the empty, echoing galleries of the palace.

‘It iss as if the plague came,’ Peter said.

‘God between us and evil,’ Swan said.

His next step was the offices. The majordomo, the secretary and the clerks were all in closets and small rooms on the ground floor and in the basement. Swan walked down to echoing halls, and found scrolls neatly in pigeonholes and a tall stack of cards inscribed and ready to be sent.

He knew that Giannis Trapitzou and his wife Irene no longer lived in the palazzo. Swan knew their home and walked there, amazed – amazed – at the silence of the streets. The Trapitzitoi lived in a tall stuccoed house well to the south of the palazzo. It had once been the house of a steward of an estate.

Swan knocked and knocked. Eventually, a middle-aged Greek woman came and frowned at him.

‘I seek Maestro Giannis or Mistress Irene,’ Swan said.

‘Not here,’ she said, and tried to swing the door shut.

In Greek, he asked, ‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’

The Greek woman smiled. ‘Ah – excuse me, my lord! I didn’t know you. Maestro Giannis has taken the despoina and the baby to the country. Because of the election.’

Swan declined a cup of wine and walked back to the palazzo. He knew where to find Cesare, but it was a long walk. He didn’t know where Maestro Accudo had moved – the dapper notary had lived in an apartment in the palazzo for years, and had suddenly taken a house.

Swan walked back up to the cardinal’s receiving office once more – hoping against hope that the great man would have returned, or that Alessandro, or Giovanni or one of the Greeks would have appeared. But he could feel the house’s emptiness from the entry hall, and the only sounds of life came from below.

Defeated, Swan went back to the kitchen. ‘Do any of you know where Messire Alessandro might be found?’ he asked. He looked around apologetically. ‘I really thought he’d turn up.’

Alceste shrugged. ‘You have not been with the household during an election?’ he asked.

Swan shook his head.

Alceste savoured his moment of knowing more than one of the cardinal’s couriers, who usually sat inscrutably, knowing everything. ‘When the cardinals are in convocation, they can receive no messages nor send them.’ He shrugged. ‘All of them are marooned in the Vatican.’ Alceste wrinkled his nose and smiled at Antoine. ‘For some reason, Captain Alessandro is very busy in those times. As was his predecessor.’

One of the apprentice cooks, greatly daring, raised a heavy hand. ‘Eh – messire?’

Swan smiled to put the young, spotty man at ease. ‘Carlo? Isn’t it?’

The young man flushed at being recognised. ‘Lord Suane, I … overheard … that is … one of the boys.’ He sputtered and went out like a damp candle.

Swan nodded. ‘You heard from one of the pages?’

‘Ay, my lord.’ The cook nodded. ‘That the capitano – that is, Messire di Bracchio—’

‘Out with it,’ spat the cook.

‘Went to the house of the Malatesta,’ the undercook said. ‘That is, the cardinal – our master – is said to have sent him.’

Swan smiled. The Malatesta di Rimini were among the Pope’s least trusted, most feared retainers. Noblemen of the Romagnol, they fought each other and everyone else. But they always had too many men-at-arms, and Alessandro knew their chief, the Wolf of Rimini, as he was called, even to his face. Cardinal Bessarion sometimes turned to the Malatesta for muscle.

Swan frowned. ‘Are papal elections violent?’ he asked.

Even the pot boys looked at him as if he were a fool.

Swan sighed. He nodded to Peter. ‘Let us go and visit the Malatesta,’ he said.

Peter shook his head. ‘I’ve been in the saddle for three weeks,’ he said slowly. ‘If the cardinal needs me, he can find me himself – just here, in his house. Eh? Why must we go looking for him? And in that house of killers?’ He rose, and then looked at Swan. ‘Unless you order me?’ he added.

Swan thought for a moment. ‘And if I do?’ he asked.

‘Certes,’ Peter said. ‘Then I remind you how many months my pay is in arrears.’

Rome, during a papal election.

The streets were so silent that you might have thought the plague had come. Wagons still moved about, and men haggled in the market, but the street traffic was slowed to a handful of men, and all of them were armed. Swan went out, walked to the end of the Via Cortese and back to the cardinal’s palazzo to fetch his sword and dagger. He was pleased to see that he had several letters, and they almost dissuaded him from his errand, but he had news – crusade news – that the cardinal would want.

He went back out into the cold, damp spring. The Malatesta maintained a fortified residence – a set of old towers with curtain walls, like a small fortification inside the city. It was across the Tiber, a good English league away.

Swan walked quickly. He wore his gloves and hat, and took purposeful strides, and he was unmolested, even when he crossed the forum, right across the ruins. His boots, gloves, sword and deerskin doublet all said ‘soldier’. Or so he hoped.

Down to the river and across the small fortified bridge at Ponta Santa Maria.

And then back, almost the way he’d come, but on the other side. He was wary – wary of armed men at any time, wary of the Orsini of Rome, with whom he had waged a two-year-old feud, and wary of footpads. But the city’s silence did not hide violence. Even the footpads were in convocation. He walked uphill from the Tiber and found the Malatesta towers as grim as he remembered them – grimmer, perhaps, in a gentle April rain.

There were two men in corselets on duty in front of the gate. Swan bowed. ‘Might I enquire after Capitano Alessandro di Bracchio?’ he asked the nearest. The man was big – huge, even. He towered over Swan, with a red-blond beard.

The man shrugged.

His partner laughed. ‘He only speaks German,’ he said in good Roman. ‘He’s a Swiss.’

Swan smiled, as pleasantly as possible. The Swiss, in his small round steel cap and carrying a halberd big enough to stop a charging elephant, was a fearsome sight.

The smaller Italian – smaller, but still half a head taller than Swan – nodded without moving the rest of his torso. ‘Di Bracchio paid us the honour of a visit,’ he admitted. ‘You’re his lieutenant, eh? The one the Orsini all want to castrate?’

Swan nodded. ‘Do you know if my capitano is still here?’ he asked.

The Italian guard looked him over. ‘There’s a reward,’ he said.

Swan sighed. ‘And you want to earn it?’ he asked. His eyes locked with the Italian’s.

The man pursed his lips. ‘The Wolf would gut me, even if I succeeded,’ he said. ‘No private contracts, no sidelines. It’s in our contracts. The Wolf doesn’t like divided loyalties,’ he went on.

Swan imagined that the Wolf didn’t fancy men who talked too much, either, but it was not his business. ‘Do you think I might enquire?’ he asked.

The talkative Italian sent a runner to ask whether the Capitano Alessandro was within.

A gentleman returned and the door within the great gate was opened. The gentleman beckoned him inside.

‘Sword,’ said the Italian on duty. He held out his hand.

Swan paused. But the equerry bowed. ‘Ser Suane may keep his sword,’ he said.

Swan smiled thinly, and wondered why he felt the need to do this. Peter was right – he could have gone back to bed and waited for the cardinal to summon him. No one liked entering the House of the Wolf.

He followed the equerry along a damp corridor that smelled of horse, and out into a wet courtyard surrounded by the bulk of the towers. The interior walls were lined with balconies and windows, and the windows were those of the last century, mullioned with a thousand small panes of glass like jewels set in silver.

They went into the central hall, and Swan crossed himself in front of an icon, and then followed his guide up a set of shallow steps to the great hall.

He took a quick breath. The old Gothic splendour of the outer yard had not prepared him for the classical feast inside. There were statues – a line of them running down one wall of the great room, so that he imagined the oak boards of the room’s floor sagging under their weight. A curio cabinet, the size of a small room, filled a niche in the middle of the wall, and above it hung the arms of the Malatesta, in embroidered silk. When Swan was close enough, he saw that it was a war banner. But the curio cabinet – if that was the appropriate term – grabbed his eye as effectively as a pretty woman would have. It was full of coins, mostly Roman. In the middle stood a small bust, in brown patinated bronze, and there were scrolls in the pigeonholes and a very familiar-looking spearhead in bronze.

‘You are the cardinal’s collector, are you not?’ asked a rough voice at his elbow.

Swan had learned that voices did not always match men, but Malatesta’s voice – rough and snarling, like the Wolf whose name he bore – was absolutely at odds with this slim, almost effeminate man. He had a narrow face, a long, straight nose, pale olive skin, very clear, and brilliant, eyes. Swan knew that Malatesta was twenty years older than he himself, but he might have been the same age.

Swan had the sense to bow graciously. ‘My illustrious lord is too kind,’ he said. ‘Which is to say that I have found one or two small curiosities for His Eminence.’

Malatesta nodded. ‘What do you like of mine?’ he asked in his grave, gravelly voice. It was like watching a boy imitate a man, and Swan couldn’t help but think of Domenico Gattleussi on Lesvos, who had a high-pitched, effeminate voice.

Swan’s hand lingered near the bronze bust. ‘May I?’ he asked. ‘I would not choose the spearhead, although I purchased it for my own lord.’

Malatesta barked a laugh. ‘But it is genuine?’ he asked.

Swan bowed. ‘Of course, illustrious lord. It is Greek, from before the time of the Persian War, if I understand correctly.’

Malatesta picked it up and hefted it. ‘A very good weight. Do you fight?’ he asked.

Swan bowed his head.

Malatesta barked again. ‘Bah – I’m out of sorts, messire. Of course you fight – you’re the hero of the fight at Chios, are you not? I meant no foolishness.’ He growled. ‘I mean only – this is a good fighting weapon, for all it is bronze, yes?’

Swan nodded enthusiastically. ‘My lord has the right of it, of course,’ he agreed.

‘But you prefer the bust?’ the Lord of Rimini asked.

Swan pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can find you a hundred spearheads, but a bust of Poseidon in bronze? It is the finest I have seen.’

It was indeed a fine bust, but Swan had found that, next to praising a man’s children, praising his collection of antiquities was a fine form of flattery and one that almost never gave offence.

The Wolf smiled politely. ‘I think you wish to flatter me. Tell me, do you ever accept commissions from others than your eminent patron?’ he asked.

Swan bowed. ‘I am your illustrious lordship’s humble servant, and would be delighted to—’

‘Christ on the cross, do you always speak this way?’ Malatesta asked. ‘You sound craven – like the braying of an ass.’

Swan’s choices were limited to taking offence from Rome’s most dangerous man, or being amused.

He laughed.

‘How would you like me to speak?’ he asked.

Malatesta’s eyes sparkled. ‘Speak as you will. If you were to let go of the words “my illustrious lord”, I suspect we’d both get through this more quickly.’

Swan nodded. ‘My … that is, er …’ He smiled. ‘Sir, I am looking for my capitano, Messire di Bracchio.’

‘Which is to say, Messire Bembo, of the Venetian Bembii.’ Malatesta smiled. His mouth seemed to have too many teeth, and Swan almost recoiled.

‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

Malatesta nodded. ‘You yourself were married – pretended to be married – to the magnificent Violetta,’ he went on. ‘You have just returned from Vienna. You see, I am well informed on most matters.’

Swan flushed. ‘Very well informed, illustrious lord,’ he said.

‘I mention this because I have a great many enemies, Messire Suane. I make an effort to be well served in the matter of information. For which I pay well.’ He looked at Swan.

Swan wondered whether he was in the presence of a madman. ‘My lord – I came … that is, I visited myself upon you looking for Capitano di Bracchio …’

Malatesta nodded. ‘He was here. I let him out the wicket. He was canvassing.’

Swan’s face, despite his best efforts, must have shown his confusion.

‘Looking for supporters – and soldiers. It’s an election! But you are English, and know mercifully little of Rome when a Pope is chosen. Bribes, fornication, violence, arson – there is nothing to which a man may not turn to make himself Holy Father. Your master might have been Pope, but he would not stoop far enough. He received eight votes in the first ballot. But he will not win.’

Swan tried to listen to the Wolf, but just as the curio cabinet had stolen his attention, so, now, it was taken from him again. A young woman entered from the back of the hall. She was decorously dressed in green and white, with a heavy gown all covered in green silk embroidery over a green kirtle. She had blond hair of a dazzling colour, like the glitter of a gold coin rendered to life, and her skin was as pale as ivory except that her cheeks were flushed. She was tall, for a woman, and her neck and throat were magnificent and gave a hint of the muscled beauty beneath the gown. Her head was high, her back straight, and she was elegant in her movements where another young woman might have been coltish.

But her eyes – when they met Swan’s they met them boldly, and even across ten paces they burned with star-fire.

‘I can send you where he may be,’ the Wolf said. ‘Unless you’d rather stay here and devour my daughter with your eyes.’

Swan’s spine tingled and he all but stood to attention. ‘My lord,’ he began.

Malatesta’s thin-lipped smile went with his narrowed eyes. If he had had fangs, they would have showed.

Swan swept a bow that included the distant daughter. ‘My lord, I can only apologise – but like the bust in the curio cabinet—’

Malatesta shook his head. ‘Spare us more empty compliments, messire. My secretary will tell you where you may find your capitano.’

Swan sighed inaudibly. ‘I am at my lord’s service in the matter of antiquities,’ he said quietly.

The Lord of Rimini turned his head to the side and met Swan’s eye. ‘I may hold you to that. Do you hunt?’

Swan longed to scratch his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My lord.’

‘Hawk?’ Malatesta asked.

An image of Khatun and Auntie with hawks on their wrists flashed suddenly through his mind. And then Khatun’s body – her ivory-coloured flesh – and without meaning to, he glanced at the young woman.

Malatesta growled.

Swan bowed. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said.

‘Hmm,’ Malatesta said. ‘My secretary has what you seek. You may go.’

Swan bowed – again – and withdrew down the room. The equerry guided him to a small room where three clerks sat writing at the direction of the lord’s secretary. The great man himself sat on a low dais, and was dressed in black. His linens were so white that they almost glowed. He was old – almost fifty. He was sealing his way through a stack of completed letters and commands.

‘Savaged by the master, eh?’ he said.

Swan stood silently. All he wanted was to get away from the palace of the Wolf.

‘Here – I’ve written the directions. It is a tavern by the river.’ The secretary looked up. ‘May I give you a word of advice, young man?’

Swan inclined his head.

The man smiled thinly. ‘Avoid the Demoiselle Iso as if she carried the plague,’ he said. ‘She may choose not to avoid you.’ He nodded affably. ‘People die,’ he added. ‘Messire Alessandro is an old and true friend of this house and can perhaps explain. Be wary in the streets – I gather this is your first papal election?’

The equerry led him into the yard. A chair – with eight porters – was waiting by the hall door, and even as Swan left the office wing, the Demoiselle Iso swept down the steps. But she looked about her and spotted Swan. She flashed him a smile, and he responded before he had given the matter much thought.

He crossed the yard with the silent equerry and entered the tunnel to the main gate just as the lady’s closed chair came into the tunnel. Swan stood aside against the damp stones.

‘Stop!’ ordered an imperious voice. The chairmen halted. A window opened in the chair’s box, and Demoiselle Iso’s beautiful face appeared, perfectly framed. ‘What is your name, Cavaliere?’ the demoiselle asked.

Swan bowed despite the filth on the cobbles. ‘I am called Tommaso, my lady. Tommaso Swan.’

She smiled, and her lips and teeth seemed to illuminate the tunnel. ‘A pleasure, messire.’ The window closed, and the voice said, ‘Walk on!’

The equerry frowned. ‘She’s trouble,’ he whispered.

Swan nodded.

Two streets south of the Malatesta fortress, Swan found two dead men. Both had been stabbed repeatedly, and both had been stripped of weapons – and purses. They were wearing the remnants of Collona red and yellow colours.

Swan looked around carefully. But there was no point in asking anyone anything. Romans had mastered the art of never seeing a killing.

He pulled his short cloak closer about him and headed towards the tavern. The rain was coming down harder and the streets were awash. His good boots began to soak through and he cursed the weather, the election and his master’s failure to leave forwarding instructions.

The tavern was a four-storey building in three wings and a barn around a central courtyard. It had been built a century before to house pilgrims, and its outside wooden balcony and the line of wooden shields bearing coats of arms served to make it look as if it had been transplanted from the Tyrol, through whose winter valleys Swan had passed just the week before. The tavern was as busy as the streets were silent, and men were crowding the door, so that Swan had to force a passage, beaming in all directions to show goodwill and clutching his sword to his chest to avoid dragging it across other men’s shins.

Inside was chaos. The inn had a dozen big tables, and every one of them was crowded. It took Swan a moment to take it in – but it was obvious as soon as he looked that all of Cardinal Bessarion’s staff were here, working from an inn. Father Simon, who had replaced the French priest as the household’s majordomo, sat at one table, and Alessandro sat at another, both served by clerks who sat with them, every one with pen in hand, every pen scribbling furiously.

It appeared that Father Simon was distributing money. It appeared that Alessandro was collecting information.

Di Bracchio looked up, caught Swan’s eye, and grinned. He bounced to his feet and shoved through the press to put his arms around Swan. ‘The prodigal returns!’ he shouted over the tumult. ‘I’ve needed you for days!’

At his shoulder was Cesare di Brescia. The notary and occasional man-at-arms had on a breastplate, and he pressed it against Swan when it was his turn. ‘We didn’t expect you for a week!’

Swan experienced that wave of relief that parents know when a child has been missing and is found. Before he entered the inn, he had been prepared to be angry with Di Bracchio and even with the cardinal – now, in his relief at finding his household, he was all smiles.

‘I had some trouble finding you,’ he said.

Alessandro made a face and then slapped his forehead theatrically. ‘Christ on the cross!’ he swore. ‘How did you find us?’

‘I asked at Malatesta’s,’ Swan said.

Alessandro winced. ‘Oh – of course. Was he in a good humour?’

Swan frowned. ‘Not particularly,’ he said.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘I need another twenty men-at-arms from him.’ He paused. ‘Are you ready to work?’

‘Messire, I’m nearly dead on my feet and I have important news for His Eminence.’ Swan grimaced. ‘We rode as if the devil pursued us over the Alps, Alessandro. Peter can barely walk …’

‘Tell me your news and I’ll try and get it in to him,’ Alessandro said.

Swan leaned close. ‘Mehmet is marching for Belgrade,’ he said. ‘The Emperor has agreed to the subsidy, but will do nothing to help the King of Hungary.’

Alessandro laughed. ‘Fuck them all, the fools. When Mehmet is at the gates of Vienna, what will the Emperor do then?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I’ve had a winter of it. Hungary and the imperial diet and the fool of a legate. And now I understand the Pope is dead.’

Men were pressing in, trying to get Alessandro’s attention. ‘It’s worse than you think,’ he said. ‘Run some errands for me, and I’ll tell you what I know later.’

Swan bowed – not very deeply, as he had men pressed against him from all directions.

Father Simon wrote him out a list of errands – all errands with bags of gold attached. Each errand was directed to a religious house, and Swan left the little bags with the various gatekeepers.

At the Carmelite house, a disapproving monk in severe brown took the gold and spat, ‘Who are you from, then?’

Swan was separated from the other man by a thick oak door and a narrow wicket. ‘I represent Cardinal Bessarion,’ he said.

The Carmelite friar shook his head. ‘Tell the cardinal to save his money for the poor,’ he said. ‘That’s where this is going.’

Other men took the money with varying degrees of obsequious greed. The convent of t