‘Je me rends,’ he said heavily. ‘Je me rends.’ He waved his sword-hand.
Swan put his right foot on the hand, pinning it to the earth.
‘Jesu! Get off it, you little bitch. I have yielded.’ The fire in the count’s eyes was unholy. Even with a foot on the man’s sword-arm, his face ruined by the pommel strike, a crossbow bolt in his thigh, he was terrifying in his full plate, and his size. Swan feared him, even now.
‘Pray, Messire Count. You are about to die.’ Swan placed his sword-point near the man’s face, and found that his point was wobbling from the trembling of his hand.
‘I’m worth a thousand ducats, sodomite. Get off my hand.’
‘Pray, messire.’ Swan found his hand was steadying.
‘God is a fucking lie, boy.’ The man lay there, his one good eye staring.
Swan wished he would make one more attempt to rise – to fight. Anything to justify what he was about to do.
His point wavered.
Alessandro said, ‘Just kill him, for the love of God.’
He took a deep breath and . . .
Giannis leaned over and pulled the latch on his crossbow, and his quarrel blew through the man’s skull and killed him instantly. ‘There’s money wasted,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You hit bad, messire?’
Peter was hobbling, favouring his side.
In the distance, four dust clouds on the plain gradually merged to two, and then to one. By the time Stefanos came riding back, Alessandro was on horseback, one foot out of the stirrup and dangling, with Swan’s neck cloth around his ankle.
Stefanos had Marcus over his horse. He shrugged at his capitano. ‘Bad luck,’ he said.
Alessandro shook his head. ‘Dead?’ he asked.
Stefanos nodded.
‘What a waste,’ Alessandro said. ‘You get them both?’
‘Yes,’ Stefanos said.
‘Where are the bodies?’ Alessandro asked.
‘In the river. In armour. What do you think – I was born yesterday?’ The Greek spat. ‘Any of them have anything worth taking? Those two had nothing but their swords.’
‘Leave it. Take nothing but coins. Nothing to mark us.’
‘What about the horses?’ Giannis asked with a whine in his voice.
Alessandro was in pain, and his temper was short. ‘What did I just say?’
‘Fuck. What do we get out of this?’ complained Stefanos. ‘Marcus is dead. I got less than an ecu.’
Alessandro glared.
Giannis, Swan, Ramone and Giorgos dragged each corpse into the wood. It was hard work, and disgusting. Ramone put a knife into each corpse’s neck under the chin, just to be ‘sure’, and searched the corpses for cash.
Peter picked up the count’s sword.
‘Leave it,’ Alessandro said.
‘It’s a fine weapon,’ Peter said, putting a touch of ‘v’ into the ‘w’ of weapon. A vine veapon.
‘It could get us all beheaded,’ Alessandro said.
Swan noted that the capitano spoke to Peter almost as a peer.
Peter nodded the way a man nods when he disagrees utterly. He dropped the sword in the grass.
In twenty minutes, they were done.
‘Put fire to the wood,’ Alessandro said.
The soldiers got a fire going, and spread it. The summer woods caught very fast.
‘Let’s go,’ Alessandro said.
Paris was dull after the road. Alessandro’s ankle cut was worse than it had looked in the field, and he had to go to a surgeon to be bled. The cardinal had apartments in the Louvre, but the rest of them were housed in the Convent of the Ursilines, and the cardinal introduced Swan to the King’s Librarian. He was shocked to be given the run of the Royal Library. Days passed very quickly while he read. He did little but read.
That was good, because every night he dreamed. He dreamed of the four men on the road, of the count’s one remaining eye, of the blood. Every night. Sometimes in the day.
He fantasised about every young nun in the convent, went out with the notaries and drank too much on the silver of the men he’d killed, and diced and played cards until he felt tired enough to sleep without dreams.
It never worked.
After they’d been in Paris a week, the cardinal summoned him. A servant fetched him from Aristotle, and he walked up through the labyrinth of halls to the cardinal’s apartment.
He bowed, was summoned forward, and kissed the cardinal’s ring.
‘Your Eminence,’ he said.
Bessarion smiled. He looked strained. ‘I am about to trade you,’ he said. ‘I believe you said you were worth a thousand florins?’
Swan noted that Alessandro was lying on the cardinal’s bed. He waved an idle salute.
Swan twitched. ‘As to that . . .’ he said, smiling apologetically.
‘Half that?’ the cardinal said. He was already writing. ‘I’m trading you to the King’s Librarian. He wants you as his prisoner. He’ll use you in the library until your father arranges your release.’ He paused. ‘Of course, we’ll need your father’s name.’ He looked at Alessandro. ‘I’m sorry for this, young man. I had thought of releasing you without ransom after your daring on the road, but the truth is . . . we’ve had a disaster.’ Bessarion, the very model of decorum, or Roman-style gravitas, had a catch in his voice.
Swan realised the man was on the edge of tears.
‘A . . . disaster?’ Swan asked.
Alessandro rose on his elbow. ‘Constantinople fell to the Turks. In May.’
Bessarion buried his head in his hands. ‘My city.’
Swan was at a loss. Constantinople was a name redolent with magic – a wonderful place, a schismatic, heretical place, a palace of wonders. Babylon. He had to imagine that the flesh-and-blood Bessarion thought of the great city as . . . as home. Home, like London.
Bessarion raised his head. Now Swan could see that he had aged. His lips were thin, his hair greyer. ‘Suddenly I am cut off from revenue. So I’m afraid I must sell your ransom, young man.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’
Swan shrugged.
‘Tell him,’ Alessandro said suddenly. ‘There’s no point in pretence, boy. Tell him.’
‘What’s this?’ Bessarion asked.
Alessandro shook his head. ‘He’s not worth a sou of ransom. He’s someone’s bastard, that’s all.’
Bessarion continued to look at Swan. ‘Is this true? Do you know this to be true?’ he asked.
Swan was frozen. But if he said his father’s name, it would all become instantly clear, anyway.
Cardinal Bessarion nodded. ‘Ah. Of course. What nobly born boy speaks Greek?’ He looked at Swan. ‘Tell us, boy.’
‘My father is dead,’ he said. He shrugged his shrug. ‘He was a cardinal. He wanted me educated for the Church.’
‘Kemp?’ asked the cardinal, his voice sharp. ‘Kemp had a mistress?’
Swan lowered his eyes. ‘Cardinal Beaufort, Eminence.’
Alessandro whistled from the bed. ‘You’re a bastard of that bastard?’ He snorted.
Bessarion pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t worth a sou.’
Alessandro laughed aloud. ‘So – you were a royal page!’
Swan spread his hands. ‘Not for long,’ he admitted. ‘I . . . played a prank.’
Bessarion shook his head. Raised his eyes from his hands and looked at his capitano. ‘I can sell the Ptolemy,’ he said. ‘It will get us the money to go to Rome.’
Alessandro nodded.
Bessarion looked at Swan. ‘You did me good service, young man. Despite your lies. Ahh – spare me. A lie is a lie. Go – I’ll see to it you get a safe conduct.’
Swan sighed. Greatly daring, he met the cardinal’s eye. Then he looked at Alessandro. And shifted his glance back to the cardinal. ‘I’d rather have a job,’ he said. ‘If it’s all the same to you. There’s . . . nothing for me in England.’