Swan walked out through the kitchen. There was one slattern watching the fire, a second washing cups, and a third providing personal services to one of the French merchant’s men – the whore he’d spoken to earlier. Swan walked past, and out through the kitchen door into the darkness of the yard.
The merchant’s wagons were unguarded. He walked all the way down the line of wagons and made himself walk all the way back to the kitchen.
He wasn’t challenged.
His heart beat like a drum in a dance, but he drew his new knife, stepped up to the last wagon in the row, and slit the tarpaulin across.
A quarter of an hour later, he met the whore in the portico of the church.
‘Why here?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘I do most of my fucking here,’ she said. ‘It’s dry.’
He handed her a whole silver ecu.
She laughed.
‘Now you run,’ he said. ‘If you are here to be found in the morning—’ He hardened his voice. ‘I’ll kill you. Myself.’
She laughed. ‘You ain’t the killing type, lad.’ She bit the coin. ‘I’m gone, now. I’ll find another town.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re a funny one, though. You didn’t steal anything.’
He grabbed her wrist.
‘Ouch! Listen! I was done fucking the archer and I watched you through the door. You moved things, but you didn’t take anything.’
He shrugged. He bent her arm back the way his uncles had taught him. ‘I can break your arm, and then cut your throat,’ he said.
He must have looked the part. She whimpered. He let go, and she ran.
He was careful. He went up and over the wall into the inn yard, waited until the wagon guard was looking elsewhere, and crept into the stable. His greatest fear was that Alessandro would be there waiting for him, but the capitano was not there. Swan got into his blankets.
Peter’s hand gripped his arm like a vice. He put his lips almost against Swan’s ear. Swan froze.
‘I owe you, but I won’t swing for you,’ he said.
Swan turned very slowly. He was so close that it made him uncomfortable. This was like whispering with a girl in the loft of his mother’s inn. His heart was hammering.
‘We won’t swing,’ he said.
Peter grunted.
Swan lay awake, trying to tell himself that his plan was foolproof, but now the whore and the Fleming could kill him, and he was still awake when the light showed through the roof and the cock crowed.
There was a scream and a roar of anger from the yard.
His heart beat double time, and he thought, I’m an idiot.
He’d just seen the flaw in his plan, and it was far too late to fix it.
Cardinal Bessarion listened to the angry remonstrances of the count and the endless gush of invective from the injured merchant for an hour. Eventually, he bowed to both men and left them, mounting his destrier and riding at the head of his own convoy, out of the inn yard and on to the road. He rode side by side with his captain for a mile.
Swan watched them from the middle of the convoy, where he rode with the lawyers, as the road was deemed safe enough without him. He managed a blank face – he made some Latin jokes that fell flat, and he tried to engage Giannis, who waved and rode away.
He was scared enough that every apparent slight seemed to him to show that everyone knew what he had done.
He saw Alessandro nod to the cardinal and ride back down the column, and he knew immediately that the capitano was coming for him.
He straightened his back.
The Italian turned his horse neatly, and waved. ‘The blessing of the day to you, Messire Swan. The cardinal begs the honour of your company.’
Swan bowed in the saddle. ‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure than his company, unless possibly your own,’ he said in Italian.
Cesare slapped him on the back. ‘The courtier’s motto! If you must rub your nose in a man’s arse, do it with elegance.’
Swan flushed, and Cesare laughed.
‘Never mind him,’ said Alessandro.
They rode along the column to the cardinal without another word.
‘Good morning, messire my prisoner,’ said the cardinal.
Swan bowed, and accepted the proffered hand, kissed the ring.
Bessarion smiled. ‘How did you do it?’ he asked.
Swan realised that the Italian man-at-arms was very close to his back.
‘Listen,’ said Bessarion. ‘Alessandro thinks you did it, and I think you did it.’
Alessandro leaned into his back. ‘If you did it without stealing – then you have done us a noble service. And it is an act of . . . let’s say an act of war. A feat of arms. Tell.’
Swan hesitated.
Because he had made a mistake, and once he told . . .
The cardinal reached out and put a hand on his arm. ‘You took goods from the merchant’s wagons, and put them in the count’s empty wagons.’
Swan looked back and forth between the two men.
‘If I were to say that I found the count’s wagons empty—’ he said.
Alessandro laughed. ‘I thought so,’ he said, punching the air.
Cardinal Bessarion frowned. ‘Messire Merechault claims that he is missing six bales of goods. As well as four pieces of carved ivory from a Parisian maker to be delivered in Burgundy.’
Swan shrugged. He’d learned that shrug through hard practice. He could shrug like that even when his uncles were hitting him with a belt. ‘I imagine the count’s men have them,’ he said.
Bessarion leaned over. ‘I would be very disappointed to find that anything else was true.’ He leaned back. ‘But I am in your debt, messire. The count will be tied up in law for a week. Even the merchant, I think, owes you some gratitude.’
‘It is a pity they can’t find the girl,’ Alessandro said.
‘Girl?’ the cardinal asked.
‘That sly rogue, the count – the supposed count – paid a whore to distract the night guard while his men stole from the wagons.’ Alessandro looked at Swan. Who shrugged. Again.
‘Or so says the night guard,’ Swan said. ‘Perhaps he was bribed.’
Bessarion nodded. ‘What I cannot fathom,’ he said quietly, ‘is why the supposed count would be fool enough to put the goods in his own wagons under Merechault’s nose.’
Swan writhed.
Alessandro came to his rescue. ‘Par dieu, Eminence. He’s arrogant enough to haul empty wagons across four fords, as if we would never notice them. He thought he might get away with it. That’s all.’
It occurred to Swan at that point that he was going to get away with it, and a feeling of joy flooded him, unmixed with any reserve whatsoever. No school prank, no petty thievery in Cheapside, would ever have the satisfaction of this – pulled off under the very eyes of the enemy.
Bessarion nodded.
Swan found that he liked these strange, foreign men, and he looked back and forth at them. After a few more paces, he said, ‘I must confess a thought I have had.’
The cardinal bowed slightly. ‘I can provide absolution,’ he said.
Swan tried to see a way to tell the truth without owning to his part in it. ‘If – someone – had – hmm. Put the count in this unenviable position,’ he said. ‘Ahem. If the count imagined that he had been slighted—’
‘Get on with it,’ muttered Alessandro.
‘What is to keep the count from revenge?’ he asked. ‘He must suspect – er – us.’
Alessandro raised an eyebrow.
Swan went on – he’d had all morning to think it through. ‘At some point, Merechault will call for the . . . I don’t know what they are called in France, but in London we’d call him the sheriff. And the count will find himself in a difficulty.’ He was speaking too fast.
‘He will, too,’ Alessandro said.
‘So he kills Merechault and sets fire to the inn and rides away to kill us,’ Swan finished. ‘As he has more men-at-arms than we do ourselves.’